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Borrowed Plumes 



By Owen Seaman 

THE BATTLE OF THE BAYS 

Fourth Edition. i6mo, $i,oo net. 

" Mr. Owen Seaman is one of the very few followers of Calverley 
who are really worthy of that matchless master. ... A brilliant 
parodist. , . . There is not a dull page in this book, we had 
almost said not a dull line. . . . There is much more which it is 
tempting to transfer to this place, but we will merely point out the 
penetrating satire of the lines ' To a Boy-Poet of the Decadence,' 
the excruciating bombast of the epistles to and from Kaiser Wil- 
helm, the delicious fun of ' The Rhyme of the Kipperling,' and 
the fresh, elastic style of every < ne of the rhymes from the first 
page to the last. In its field, ' 1 he Battle of the Bays' will be a 
classic." — Neiv York Tribune. 

" The best of all living parodists is Owen Seaman. Some of its 
practitioners, like Calverley, brought it to a high state of perfec- 
tion. But there are judicious critics who accord the contempo- 
rary parodist a higher place than the man who was apparently his 
master," — Philadelphia Press. 

" A volume of cleverer poetic parodies or of more humorous 
verse in general than Mr. Owen Seaman's ' Battle of the Bays ' 
has not come my way for many a day. . . . They positively bub- 
ble with the most unexpected fun." — Mr. H. D. Traill in The 
Graph ic, 

IN CAP AND BELLS 

Fourth Edition. i6mo. $i.oo net. 

" Clean laughter and scholarly wit ; polished metre and humor- 
ous phrase. He who will look elsewhere for the combination of 
these qualities in modern contemporary verse must look far ere he 
find them. . . . Books that no melancholy man should be with- 
out." — Mr. Theodore Cook in Literature. 

" Here is no shouting, no banging of the bauble. The form of 
phrase, the inflexion of voice, the dancing light of humor, make 
up the motley which is the true ester's "only wear"; and under 
his flashes of merriment is a sober, sound philosophy. This, after 
all, is the only kind of humor that lasts . . . it is easy to appreci- 
ate, difficult to acquire ; and Mr. Owen Seaman, having acquired 
it with all the felicity of good humor and art, stands practically 
alone among the humorists of the hour. . . . His technical quality 
seems to strengthen with every new volume."— il/n Arthur 
Waugh in The St. James Gazette. 

JOHN LANE, LONDON AND NEW YORK 



Borrowed Plumes 



By 
Owen Seaman 

Author of ** The Battle of the Bays" ; " In Cap 
and Bells'* ; ** Horace at Cambridge," etc. 

















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New York 

Henry Holt and Company 

1902 



THE i-iBRARY Of 

OOHGRESS, 
T>Ai Cop«feo Recsiveo 

3hP. 15 1902 

COPVWOHT ENTHV . 

CiAsa O. xxa No. 

COPY 3. 






Copyright, 1902, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND CO. 



Published September, jgo2. 



L 



it 



TO 

THE AUTHORS, 

MANY OF THEM MY FRIENDS, 

WHOSE METHODS I HAVE HERE ATTEMPTED 

TO IMITATE; 

AND, IN PARTICULAR, TO 

PEARL MARY-TERESA CRAIGIE. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. THE TWO ELIZABETHS 1 

II. " JOHN OLIVER HOBBES " (MRS. CRAIGIE) . . 17 

III. MISS ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER 32 

IV. AN englishwoman's LOVE-LETTERS 43 

V. MR. HALL CAINE 59 

VI. MISS MARIE CORELLI 83 

VII. MR. DOOLEY 89 

VIII. MR. HENRY HARLAND 95 

IX. MR. MAURICE HEWLETT 106 

X. MR. GEORGE MEREDITH 117 

XI. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK (LORD AVEBURY) 126 

XII. MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 132 

XIII. MR. W. E. HENLEY 145 

XIV. MR. HENRY JAMES 153 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

XV. M. MAURICE MAETERLINCK 172 

XVI. MR. G. BERNARD SHAW 179 

XVII. MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS 189 

XVin. MR. HENRY SETON MERRIMAN 192 

XIX. MR. ANDREW LANG 195 

XX. MR. GEORGE MOORE 197 

XXI. MRS. MEYNELL 201 

XXII. MR. WILLLAM WATSON 203 



BORROWED PLUMES. 
I. 

THE TWO ELIZABETHS. 

[With acknowledgments to the respective 
Authors of those popular works, '' Elis- 
abeth and her German Garden'' and 
'' The Visits of Elisabeth/' It will be 
seen that extracts from the former's 
Diary and from the tatter's Letters are 
given alternately, the younger Eliza- 
beth being supposed to arrive on a visit 
to the elder Elisabeth about the /th of 
the month.] 

March ist. — I am writing this in my 
dear garden with the thermometer at fifteen 
below zero Centigrade. A tumultuous 
North-wind, with a kiss of East in it, is 
blowing straight off the Baltic, bringing up 
faint delicious odours of sea-icicles and 



t Borrowed Plumes 

frozen Finn. I like these better than the 
smell of hyacinths, which seems to me too 
assertive. I often ask myself what order of 
mind it is that prefers new spring dresses 
and a town-flat to precious solitude and com- 
munion with a botanical dictionary. I open 
my treasure at random and read : Galan- 
thus, Gale, Galeobdolon, Galeopsis, Galin- 
gale, Gardenia, Garlic, Gastridium. I shall 
send for whole trucks of these and have 
them planted in masses all over the carriage- 
drive. I wish I were less ignorant about 
their symptoms, but I cannot trust to the 
gardener, whose imagination does not rise 
above artichokes, which he talks of training 
up the sun-dial. 

What a lovely solitary February it has 
been, with the virgin snow up to the bed- 
room windows and the crocuses waiting 
their time, all snug and warm under their 
eider-down quilt. As I look back to the day 
when I married the Man of War, with a 
cheerful carelessness of consequences, and 
no guarantee of a garden at all, and the pros- 
pect of his constant company, I wonder at 
my temerity. But it has worked out admira- 



The Two Elizabeths 3 

bly; and surely there are few women who 
can enjoy their husband's absence with such 
pure dehght, and yet tolerate his presence 
with such equanimity. 

And now Eleanor Lovelace must needs 
ask for her girl Elizabeth to pay me a visit 
for the sake of her German. I do hope she 
will not be too exacting and want society 
and tea-parties. The only rule of hospitality 
which I really understand is the one about 
speeding the parting guest. However, I 
hear she is very innocent and ingenue and 
so she ought to be fond of flowers. She 
may even have a soul, and be able to talk 
about the easier poets. 

5TH. — Chateau Chasse-Bebe. Dearest 
Mamma, — I leave here to-morrow. I wish 
I hadn't got to stay with Grafin Elizabeth. 
I know they won't any of them have waists, 
except the men, and they eat their food even 
worse than the French, and can't say nice 
things to make up for it. Still, it's time I 
left here anyway. Some of the men are so 
absent-minded, and keep on proposing to me 
in the billiard-room (not the English kind. 



4 Borrowed Plumes 

you know), and whole heaps of the 99th 
Chasseurs have pinched me in corridors and 
places, and I don't think this is quite respect- 
ful, do you, Mamma? And it is so awk- 
ward, because Celestine notices the marks on 
my arms when she is drying me after my 
tub, and this makes her very patronising and 
hinty, and the stuffing I put into my bed- 
room key-hole because of the draught keeps 
falling out, I can't think why. Two duels 
have been fought for some reason or other, I 
don't know what, in the deer-park and one in 
the middle of a steeplechase. Nobody was 
hurt, of course, but it makes people look 
awfully sheepish, and I'm sure it's time I 
left. I am picking up some new gowns 
from Rosalie's to astonish the Fatherland, 
though I don't know what the nearest gar- 
rison town is or whether they have fleets 
and things on the sea there, and goodnight, 
dear Mamma, 

Your affectionate daughter, 

Elizabeth. 

8th. — I have hardly had time to discover 
whether Elizabeth has a soul, but her dinner- 



The Two Elizabeths 5 

gown and general attitude do not encourage 
this hope. I am a little afraid that she ex- 
pected a house-party, or at least an officer or 
two to take her in. I may be obhged to send 
for the Man of War to amuse her. It sounds 
improbable, but in his heavy negative way 
he Hkes a young girl without ideas or yearn- 
ing intelHgence. 

One thing that struck me as a deplorable 
revelation of her character was a remark 
that she made about some women who bored 
her ("stuffy people," she called them) on 
one of her visits; "nothing," she said, 
" rustled nicely when they walked, and they 
had no scent on/' Unfortunately she allows 
no such defect in her own toilette, and the 
scent she " has on " quite overpowers the 
pure fragrance of my snowdrops, besides 
being a detestable thing in itself. I even sigh 
for the Man of War's tobacco, and look for- 
ward to an afternoon with my artificial 
manures as a corrective. 

I asked her the usual question at night — 
" You are not afraid of sleeping alone ? " 
" Oh, no," she said, " I'm used to ghosts ; 
there were whole stacks of them at Norman 



6 Borrowed Plumes 

Tower in the passages, and a funny old 
thing asked me to join them and he would 
take care of me, but I thought it would be 
such shivery work in the middle of the 
night." I am afraid Elizabeth's mother is 
not careful enough in her choice of houses 
for this young person to stay in. Girls with 
such beautifully childlike minds are often 
too unsuspecting of evil. 

iiTH. — Schloss Bliimendam. Dearest 
Mamma, — I can't imagine why you sent me 
here. It's been the stuffiest time I ever 
had. I'm the whole house-party in myself, 
and not a man of any kind in the place 
except the coachman who's married and the 
gardener who's engaged to the cook. It's 
so depressing, and I think Celestine means 
to go out of her mind. The Grafin only has 
two dresses, and talks all day of nothing but 
flowers and guano, and have I read any good 
books lately, and of course I haven't, and I 
can't even think of any names to pretend 
with. 

Once I thought something was really 
going to happen, when the Grafin said that 



The Two Elizabeths 7 

she was looking forward excitedly to a 
whole heap of teas. I should have chosen 
dances myself, but teas are better than noth- 
ing, and sometimes you get a stray man to 
look in; and then it turned out that it was 
short for tea-roses. Such dull things to look 
forward to! 

And then, again, I never get really 
shocked here. Oh, yes, once I was when 
the Grafin said that she hoped that a lot of 
Rubenses wouldn't get into Madame Joseph 
Schwarz's bed by mistake again as they did 
last year. Of course I guessed that '' Ru- 
benses " were only pictures, but it did seem 
rather muddly for Madame Schwarz having 
them actuall}^ in her bed, and so many of 
them too, besides being very valuable, I 
should think, and easily damaged, especially 
if she is stout like most German women are. 
And I wondered if Madame Schwarz was a 
visitor or just the housekeeper; and when I 
asked if they weren't taken out at once, the 
Grafin said that no, it was too late and they 
had to keep them there all the summer as it 
wasn't safe to move them. And then T 
asked wasn't it very uncomfortable for her 



8 Borrowed Plumes 

having to sleep on a crowd of old oils, or 
were they only very little ones, and was 
there room for her in the other half of the 
bed; and it turned out that it wasn't pictures, 
or a visitor, or a housekeeper at all, but just 
the names of different dwarf-roses! 

Always roses and things! I thought I 
liked flowers till I came here, though I was 
never good at their names and used to mix 
up verbenas with scarlet-runners; but after 
this I know it will take away my appetite 
just seeing them on a dinner-table, and when 
I die, which I shall do pretty soon if things 
go on like this, I hope they'll have a notice 
put in the paper, saying, " No flowers, 
please." 

I don't wonder the Graf himself keeps 
away from his wife. I suppose her parents 
made him marry her like the poor Marquis 
at Chasse-Bebe. I really miss him and the 
Vicomte, and if Lord Valkop was here now 
I don't believe I should smack him so hard 
again, however he behaved, though they 
were rather forward, all of them, weren't 
they. Mamma? 

Later. — Great news! The Grafin says 



The Two Elizabeths 9 

vaguely that the Man-of-War is coming 
before the month is out. So perhaps there 
will be a dance on board, and anyway we 
ought to see something of the officers. 
Celestine is quite perking up at the thought 
of bosuns or whatever they call them here. 
The Grafin speaks of the Man-of-War; so I 
suppose there isn't more than one in the Ger- 
man Navy. I do hope there's no mistake 
this time, and that it won't turn out to be a 
new bulb, or something of that sort. 

Your affectionate daughter, 

Elizabeth. 

15TH. — I remember reading in a wise 
book that a fresh acquaintance coming 
among close friends is always a bore. V/ell, 
Elizabeth is the fresh acquaintance, and the 
close friends are myself and I, which in- 
cludes my garden and my books. I really 
believe the babies dimly understand, and are 
doing their best to act as buffers. The 
Michaelmas Goose baby, whose equilibrium 
is still unstable, drags Elizabeth about by 
her skirts, singing lustily her favourite Sun- 
day hymn — " Some day my earthly house 



lo Borrowed Plumes 

will fall!'' Yesterday, the March Hare 
baby tried to distract our visitor by an invi- 
tation to a game of Adam and Eve in the 
garden. '' And you shall pwetend to be Eva, 
if you like, Fraulein Else," she said, encour- 
agingly. 

"But wouldn't it be rather cold?" pro- 
tested Elizabeth. 

The March Hare baby, who is much less 
ingenuous than Elizabeth, grew red in the 
cheeks and said, " You keeps your fings on, 
natilrlich. It looks properlier." 

"And how will you do for a serpent?" 
asked Elizabeth, whose nature is sadly reli- 
ant on the concrete, and cannot realise the 
unseen world. 

" We'se got a weal live snake," said the 
May Meeting baby, " but it's gestuft, so you 
won't be bited." 

"And I will be the Apfel/' added the 
March Hare baby, " and when you eats me I 
will unagree wiv you insides." 

" But there isn't anybody to be Adam,'' 
said Elizabeth, thinking to raise an insur- 
mountable difficulty. 

The March Hare baby dealt with it 



The Two Elizabeths 1 1 

promptly and conclusively, not without some 
show of pity for Elizabeth's limited ima- 
gination. " The Gartner, he will be Adam," 
she said : " Adam, in Mummy's story, was a 
Gartner, auch/' 

The principal roles being thus distributed, 
with the other babies as mute supers repre- 
senting the lion pensive beside the lamb, 
symbols of the peace of Eden about to be so 
rudely disturbed, I was able to retire to what 
the play-bill would call '' Another glade in 
Paradise," and talk in solitude with my 
larches. But that remark of Elizabeth's kept 
preying on my mind — " There isn't anybody 
to be Adam! " Such a want of imagination; 
and such a confession of a woman's standard 
of desire as popularly accepted ! I shall cer- 
tainly have to telegraph for the Man of War. 
For either he would consent to be amused by 
a kind of humour that differs essentially 
from mine, or else, if she failed to win him 
from his iron mood, he would direct her 
attention, with paralysing frankness, to the 
limited purpose served by all women in any 
decently ordered scheme of society. 



12 Borrowed Plumes 

19TH. — Dearest Mamma, — You can't 
think what a dismal time I am having. 
Some stodgy Fraus have called, but nothing 
in the shape of a man. And even then I 
didn't count because I wasn't married ; as 
if one could possibly marry, a German, any- 
how. What an awful price to pay for being 
allowed into their cackling old hen yards ! 
One of the frumps was talking of a French 
girl, in Berlin, whose engagement with a 
German officer was broken off because he 
saw her trying to climb on to the top of a 
tram-car. " Wasn't it real lace," I asked, 
" or was her ankle too bulgy ? " All the 
three Fraus turned round with a jerk and 
put up their glasses at me, and then 
looked at the Grafin, as much as to say, 
" What is this thing ? " So the Grafin ex- 
plained to me that the French girl, being 
a foreigner like me, didn't know that the law 
wouldn't let women ride on the top of trams, 
because it was bad for morals. Aren't they 
funny, Mamma ? I know I should always 
be in prison or somewhere if I lived here ; 
not that it would make much difference, 
after being in this house. 



The Two Elizabeths i 3 

I don't so much mind the plain Hving, and 
I could easily do without stupid damsons 
and things with my beef ; but it's what she 
calls the " high thinking " that is so difficult. 
Of course, I don't say aloud what I'm think- 
ing about, but I know, by the Grafin's eye, 
that she can always tell that it isn't high 
enough. Don't be surprised, will you. 
Mamma, if I telegraph some day for you to 
write and tell me to come home ? The only 
thing that consoles me here is looking for- 
ward to the Man-of-War coming. Mean- 
time I'm wearing to a thread, and Celestine 
talks of taking in my waists, and I really 
ought to be as fat as possible to please the 
Man-of-War, because they must be used to 
the natives being podgy. So I shall go in 
for what they call Swine-cutlets and Munich 
Beer, which are very developing. 

Your affectionate daughter, 

Elizabeth. 

27TH. — I cannot pretend to be very sorry 
that Elizabeth has suddenly announced that 
she has to leave the day after to-morrow ; 
besides, I can now wire to the Man of War 



14 Borrowed Plumes 

to say that he need not come ; and so I shall 
have the pink silence of the pines all to 
myself. I really had tried to improve her by 
simple processes like the sight of a sunset 
through woods ; and when I saw a far-away 
look in her e3^es I thought I was having a 
certain success, till she said, '' I do like that ; 
I simply vmst have a gown of that shade." 
Failing here I was not likely to succeed on 
subtler points, such as the alertness of tulips 
or the stooping divinity of nasturtiums. 

I think myself fortunate to have ^ot rid of 
Elizabeth so easily. For a big girl, she is 
much too aggressively innocent. I always 
suspect people of that kind ; they seem like 
Persian Yellows, very plausible to the care- 
less eye, but with strange crawling things 
inside them when you look closer. 

And now to go and dance with my daffo- 
dils ! 

28th. — Dearest Mamma, thank you for 
answering my telegram so quickly, and tell- 
ing me I may come home at once. I will 
explain why. Such a funny thing happened 
four days ago. It came out as quite the 



The Two Elizabeths 1 5 

most natural thing in the world that the 
Grafin is married to the Man-of-War ! You 
can guess how staggered I was, and nearly 
choked over my Swine-cutlet, because it 
sounded just like a harem, or something of 
that sort, only the other way about. I had 
hardly breath enough to ask if this was the 
same Man-of-War that she was expecting 
to-morrow, and the Grafin looked quite sur- 
prised and said how could there be more 
than one Man-of-War, and I didn't know 
whether she meant that the German fleet was 
so small, but anyhow I agreed with her that 
one Man-of-War was quite enough to be 
married to at once, though I didn't say so. 
And then it struck me that if they were all 
married to her, all the officers I mean, there 
would be nobody left over for me, besides it 
not being quite nice for me to stay in a 
house with a hostess married to so many 
people, though Celestine says it wouldn't 
include the warrant-officers ; but then she 
is so selfish and only thinks about herself. 
And that's why I sent you the telegram, and 
please expect me soon after this arrives. Of 
course, I always said the Grafin was a stuffy 



1 6 Borrowed Plumes 

old bore, but I never should have thought she 
was quite so wicked. I almost wonder you 
let me come here at all, don't you, Mamma ? 
And fancy me being afraid that the Man-of- 
War might turn out to be an innocent bulb, 
and I remain. 

Your affectionate daughter, 

Elizabeth. 



11. 

"JOHN OLIVER HOBBES'' 
(Mrs. Craigie.) 

[Robei't Orange.] 

Robert was passing through that crisis 
which is inevitable with those in whom the 
ideals of childhood survive an ordered 
scheme of ambition. His head was his 
Party's ; but his heart was in the " King- 
dom under the sea," Lyonesse or another, 
not in the maps. He spent long hours of 
vigil over Jules Verne's Tzventy Thousand 
Leagues, in the original. He almost per- 
suaded himself to join the French navy and 
invent another Nautilus. It was at this 
period of his career that Disraeli spoke of 
him as " the submarine incorruptible." 

Later it became evident that the Church 
would claim her own. Depayse by arbi- 
trary choice, his adopted name of Porridge 

2 17 



1 8 Borrowed Plumes 

stood merely for the cooked article, the raw 
material being represented by his family 
name of Hautemille, a stock unrivalled in 
antiquity save by the Confucii and the Tubal- 
Cains; and to the last, even in intervals 
of the most exalted abstraction, he was a 
prey to poignant irritation when the comic 
journals (ever ready to play upon proper 
names) anglicized it phonetically as Hoat- 
meal. He repeated the Chanson de Roland 
verbatim every night in bed. But the no- 
blest portion of him was wrought of bronze 
(or else putty) Latinity. His brain reeled 
to the lilt of the rhyming- Fathers. He 
would himself compose even secular verse In 
this medium. A post-mortem examination 
of his portfolios brought to light the follow- 
ing brochure : 

Da me, Carole* in fug am ; 
Te sequente, prcBcedatn 
Usque ad ecdesiam- 

5|? * sjs * 

" I will never believe," said Poubaba 
(speaking in fluent Dutch, but with a 
Siberian accent which betrayed his Trans- 

* Dare we trace in this the original of that justly popular song, 
" Chase nte, Charlie " ? 



*' John Oliver Hobbes'' 19 

Ural habit of thought— his parentage was 
Levantine, with a Maltese cross on the 
mother's side, and he himself a reputed 
traveller in Swedisli liqueurs), " I will never 
believe the Anglo-Teuton theory that the 
Latin races are doomed to perish, remaining 
extant in Alsace and the Channel Islands 
only. Solferino was a shock to that phan- 
tasy, and Fashoda will be its death-blow." 
(It will be remembered that Major Mar- 
chand was still a mere child at the date of 
this prophecy.) 

" And Spain," he cried, " romantic home 
of lost Carloses, and odorous onions, and 
impossible Armadas — shall she suffer her 
colonies to bow to the brutal invader ? 
Never, while a breath is left in the swelling 
chests of her toreadors !" (This remark, 
again, is supposed to be made in 1869, prior 
to the late Cuban war, for which J. O. H., 
though American, was in no sort of way 

responsible. ) 

* * * * 

For a growing girl. Midget's knowledge 
of the world showed a precocity which is 
only explicable by reference to her careful 



20 Borrowed Plumes 

training in the seclusion of a convent. Of 
her hfe with Lady Fitz-Blouse she wrote : — 
*' Consolatory platitudes exude from her 
brain with the facile fluency of her own 
saucy ringlets. Artlessness, in her case, 
has grown into an accomplishment so close 
to nature that it borders on sincerity. For 
answer, I fall back upon the history of the 
Bourbons. Really, the contemptuous atti- 
tude of these English toward uncrowned 
royalties is something appalling. Yester- 
day, in company of some pompous locals, to 
whom a foreign title is a thing pour rire, I 
was compelled, against my dearest princi- 
ples, to play croquet. I stuck all the after- 
noon in the first hoop, wondering why I was 
an Archduchess. But I have not lived all 
these years without learning the value of 
self-repression. Remember me in your 

orisons." 

* * * * 

Opposition, with Robert, had been the 
very food and drink from which he had 
wrung the cud of a brooding personality. 
Chew thyself was his habitual rule of life. 
Mastered now by an indefinable sensation, 



'' John Oliver Hobbes '' 21 

made up of the elements of passion and 
brotherly love, and yet not strictly to be 
analysed as either, he found his occupa- 
tion gone. The rarefied atmosphere of his 
new environment was too strong for him. 
No prig could hope to live in it — not 
comfortably. 

* * iis * 

It will be convenient here to give a short 
extract of the very full notes taken by the 
deck-steward of the St. Malo packet during 
the extended prelude of Robert's abortive 
honeymoon. (In 1869 the progress of these 
vessels was marked by a much greater 
deliberation.) '' * My experience of human 
nature/ I overheard the lady say, * allows 
me to read your thoughts. Taught to 
indulge yourself in the gratification derived 
from self-sacrifice, you are suspicious of a 
Paradise which offers no useful scope for 
renunciation. You suffer the chagrin of not 
being a martyr to anything in particular.' 

" * Midget,' replied the gentleman, ' you 
intrude upon the sanctity of my private 
soul. I am engaged just now over the 
enigma of a submerged identity.' 



22 Borrowed Plumes 

" ' I knew it/ said the lady. ' There are 
obscure penetralia in your ethical system of 
which not even your wife is allowed the 
entree. We may be married lovers, but we 
can never, never, be friends ! ' 

" * Do not ask me to sate your curiosity,' 
said the gentleman. * It would run into 
another six-shilling volume.' " 

* * * * 

Lady Tarara - Gloriana - Mesopotamia ~ 
Variete de Pimpernel was wearing a 
sherry-coloured dress with canary facings, 
which enhanced the distinction, while it 
mitigated the obtrusiveness, of the Hittite 
streak in her complexion. Reserved yet 
expansive, sincere yet tortuous, cold yet 
inflammable, self-absorbed yet centrifugal, 
capable of devoutness yet also capable de 
tout, she was a mystery to most and a con- 
tradiction to all. Certainly she was too 
complex for Bien-entendue Fitz-Blouse, 
whose ingenuous nature was content to 
oscillate uneasily between a single pair of 
emotions — the faint memory of her first 
husband, and the fainter hope of securing 
Robert Porridge for her second. The two 



" John Oliver Hobbes *' 23 

women had little in common beside their 

womanhood (shared by the sex) and their 

desire for Robert (shared by a considerable 

section of it). 

* * * * 

** I think Mr. Browning is so true about 
soul and sense/' said Bien-entendue. 
" Women, especially, seem to be half 
spiritual and half sensible." 

" Half sensible ? " said Lady Tarara-etc, 
bitterly. " I find them altogether stupid." 

" I knew you must be badly in love, 
dear," said Bien-entendue, with quick intui- 
tion. '' Who is it ? Mine's Robert Por- 
ridge." 

She spoke with a simple candour that 
invited confidence. 

Lady Tarara-etc.'s steel belt, studded with 
black pearls, snapped abruptly and flew 
across the boudoir ; but she gave no other 
sign of the internal shock that she had sus- 
tained. 

" And mine," she replied, as she collected 
the fragments with perfect aplomb, " mine 
is — Lord Flotsam." She was a gifted 



24 Borrowed Plumes 

woman. The lie had a superb air of 
probabiUty. 

" Have you tried playing Patience, dear?" 
said Bien-entendue, very gently. " Tlie 
* Demon ' is so good for the nerves. I often 
say to myself," she added, with a woman's 
tact for easy digression, " that life is indeed 
a school for saints. I do so dislike schools 
for saints. They sound like convents, and 
seem so French. Poor dear Alfred was 
very English, you know." 

" There ought only to be boys' schools for 
saints," said Tarara-etc. ; " and yet," with a 
sudden fury, " I could be as pious as a Ves- 
tal if a man's love was to be got by it. Ah ! 
Bah ! " 

" I should think Lord Flotsam must be a 
very beautiful character," said Bien-enten- 
due, innocently. 

-K ^ T* ^ 

To Robert it was a matter of heart- 
searching that his sense of Midget's near- 
ness varied inversely with her physical prox- 
imity. Thus when she was a hundred miles 
away, he would inadvertently order dinner 
for two ; but when he actually kissed her, as 



"John Oliver Hobbes " 25 

on the exceptional occasion of their be- 
trothal, it seemed that she was almost round 
the corner of the next street. This gave a 
certain remoteness to his embrace, which 
still was recorded on the sensitive tablets 
of his conscience as a desecration. A little 
more of this strain and his taste for humour 
would have been permanently impaired. 

Flotsam, indeed, was uneasy about the 
marriage. To him the undivided devotion 
of his select circle was a thing too sacred to 
be lightly disturbed. To a friend who once 
reminded him that it is more blessed to give 
than to receive, he replied that in the case 
of true friendship he was prepared to waive 
the higher privilege. Yet it was not only 
for himself that he was concerned. True, 
he would miss Robert at piquet ; but what 
was piquet compared with his friend's high- 
est happiness, if such a marriage could con- 
summate it ? But could it ? Wives, accord- 
ing to his creed, were ordained by Provi- 
dence (an Institution which Flotsam had 
always supported as a matter of political 
conviction) to serve as the conventional' 
decoration of a man's career ; a mere favour 



26 Borrowed Plumes 

(on the man's part) attached to his serious 
fighting panoply. Robert's more lofty con- 
ception of their purpose filled his friend with 
a despondent awe, which lent to his appear- 
ance as " best man " a very natural and 
becoming dignity. 



The two men took up their ground, each 
with his pistol leaning up against the other's 
forehead. But here it is best to follow 
Robert's own description, addressed, the day 
after, to his patron, Lord Isle of Rum : — 
" ' Is it to be a Voutrancef ' I asked. ' A 
Voutrance,' he replied, with a slight intona- 
tion of contempt, as if my French had been 
at fault ; as if, in fact, I had given a false 
rendering of some notice-board at an exhibi- 
tion directing people ' To the Egress.' Yet 
you, my Lord, have not devoted the best of 
your manhood to mediaeval research without 
attaining -to know that his inclusion of the 
definite article has the sanction of all the 
highest authorities on the duello. It was a 
subtle triumph of culture that I had 
achieved, after which it seemed a relative 



"John Oliver Hobbes " 27 

grossness to blow his head off. You will 

guess that it killed him. 

*' I admit that in my more sentient 

moments I suffer regrets. One may argue 

that it was not a lingering death ; yet to kill 

a man, by whatever process, is an act that 

must ever remain irretrievable. Nor are my 

regrets adequately silenced by the reflection 

that his brain was his weakest point. Do 

not think me callous. Sarcasm is the relief 

of a mind too acutely alive to the pitifulness 

of mortality. Naturally, I am moving on. 

If your gout permits, address me, Hotel de 

la Resignation, Roma.'' 

* * * * 

The following passage is taken from an 
interview with Mr. Disraeli, published at a 
later period : — '' Yes ; after the duel he 
applied for the Chiltern Hundreds. I for- 
warded them, with reluctance, to his Italian 
address. C'etait un homme d'un hien beau 
passe, as Heine wrote of De Musset. His 
was a nature that throve on obstacles, and 
would have found the garden of the Hes- 
perides intolerable with the dragon away. 
These scruples were respected by the lady 



28 Borrowed Plumes 

who was free to become his wife. A weaker 
woman might have taken the veil : she re- 
tired into histrionics ; and, as I understand, 
still enjoys a very passable repute. To spec- 
ulate here on the familiar doctrine of gen- 
eral cussedness would be a laborious super- 
fluity. I will content myself — as one who 
has ever obeyed the guidance of his own 
instincts — with an occasional apophthegm 
which I cull from my repertoire: — 

''A fool is szvept away by his impulses: a 
wise man parleys with them: only a god can 
afford to follow them blindly/' 



[A Serious Wooing.] 

" And where shall we go for our summer 
elopement this year, dearest ? " said Jocelyn, 
as they stood locked in each other's arms. 
" Would Nuremberg suit you ? " 

** What route do you propose ? " asked 
Rosabel, suddenly practical, and extricating 
herself from his grasp. 

" I suggest the Hook of Holland and the 
Rhine to Mayence. Have you any preju- 
dices in the matter ? " 



'^ John Oliver Hobbes" 29 

'* How do you get to the Hook of Hol- 
land ? " 

'' By the Great Eastern, from Liverpool 
Street to Harwich. But why this unwo- 
manly regard for detail ? I hardly know 
you, Rosabel, in this new attitude.". 

" Is Liverpool Street the only starting- 
point for Harwich ? " She insisted with a 
strange perseverance. 

'' Rosabel, Rosabel, you have changed 
surprisingly since our last elopement. Is it 
the influence of your second marriage ? 
You never talked like this before. You were 
never importunate about termini. Can you 
have lost your old confidence in me ? " 

'' Never, never ! But we must be frank 
with one another, and face the truth. We 
shall have many embarrassments to contend 
with in our coming irregular career ; let us 
not anticipate them ; let us at least hold 
together, you and I. Is Liverpool Street 
the only starting-point for Harwich ? '' 

" Yes, a thousand times yes. And now 
kindly explain." 

A sigh of satisfaction escaped from Ro- 
sabel. " Dearest," she said, '' between those 



30 Borrowed Plumes 

who love no explanation should be needed. 
But I too will be frank with you. I have 
not lived this long, weary time apart from 
you without growing older and knowing 
more of the world. Never again, with my 
eyes open, will I elope with anyone on a 
system with alternative routes, such as the 
Chatham and South-Eastern. Have you al- 
ready forgotten the fiasco of our first 
elopement ? How it fell through, as it were, 
between two stools — namely, Victoria and 
Charing Cross ? And my first husband 
lying dead at the time, and I ignorant of 
that fait accompli ? It is by these little 
accidents — an unforeseen change of ter- 
minus at the last moment, for instance — 
that the entire destinies of two lives may 
be permanently bifurcated. But for those 
alternative routes we might have reached 
Marseilles together, read of my first hus- 
band's death in the papers, got married at 
the consulate, and been an honest man and 
woman ever afterwards." 

" * Honest,- Rosabel ? What is this new 
talk of technical virtue, based on signatures 
before witnesses ? Do you, after all, regret 



*^John Oliver Hobbes " 31 

the step we are once more taking in defiance 
of social tradition ? Ce n'est que le premier 
pas qui coute. This is the second of the 
kind." 

" No, my love, I am not drawing back. 
But a second elopement, even with the same 
man, can never be quite the same thing. 
The first prompt, instinctive glow is irrevo- 
cably gone. One becomes rational, almost 
worldly in one's unworldliness. But my 
mind is fixed; I shall not fail you. To- 
night, then, at Liverpool Street, for the 
Hook." (She smiled a little pathetically at 
this unpremeditated pleasantry.) **You will 
get the tickets — single tickets, of course. I 
must go home for my Church Service and 
hand-mirror, and to leave a p.p.c. on my 
second husband. Remember! Liverpool 
Street." 



III. 

MISS ELLEN THORNEYCROFT 
FOWLER. 

[A Double Thread.] 

" Nothing in a woman, my dear Ethel- 
frida, betrays such lack of social savoir faire 
as the habit of telling fibs," said Lady Wol- 
verhampton. '' No sensible man ever be- 
lieves that a woman means what she says; 
and that makes it so much safer to tell the 
truth. That's how I married Wolverhamp- 
ton. I told him I had never cared for any 
man, and he at once became jealous — as I 
meant he should. If a woman ever becomes 
a bishop-elect it will be quite useless for her 
to say, * Non volo episcopare/ " 

" By your ladyship's leave, is it not ' Nolo 
episcopari ' ? " said Lord Bathbrick. 
32 



Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler 33 

'* If you were not a man, Bathbrick," 
replied Lady Wolverhampton, '' you would 
know that knowledge of the Classics is such 
bad form in a woman ; almost like working 
for your living. But, talking of the sexes, I 
wonder, Ethelfrida, that you have never 
married any one. It seems such an over- 
sight ; the sort of thing that is inexcusable 
in a well-bred girl." 

The heiress turned a cynical eye upon her 
visitor. " It would be worth while to be a 
beggar-maid," she said, '' if one could make 
sure of being taken in to dinner by Cophe- 
tua. As it is, I am modest enough to believe 
that my money is the only reason for my 
popularity." 

" And a very good reason too, my dear," 
said Lady Wolverhampton, " if you must 
have one ; though there is nothing so 
unreasonable as a good reason. No man 
ever yet married a woman for herself, seeing 
that he could have no possible means of 
knowing what her actual self was like. They 
marry us for our hair, or our faces, or the 
virtues they think we have, or the money of 
which they are quite certain. And none of 
3 



34 Borrowed Plumes 

these, not even our hair, is an essential part 
of our permanent selves." 

'* But I thought, dear lady," interrupted 
Lord Bathbrick, '' that you always said your 
husband married you for yourself." 

" There you are wrong, Bathbrick. It 
was / who married him. I got quite a 
respect for him through never noticing him 
when he was there, or being able to remem- 
ber what he was like when he was away. An 
excellent test of good style. Your well-bred 
person should have no manners; none, at 
least, perceptible to the eye. Just as when 
you ask a man what sort of gown a woman 
was wearing at a ball, it has always escaped 
his notice, unless it was either overdone or 
underdone. And that reminds me that I 
could never see either sense or grammar in 
the saying. Manners maketh man. Man is 
born that way, he isn't made." 

" I can't imagine, my dear Adeline," said 
Ethel frida, with her slight nasal drawd, 
" how you contrive to say all those clever 
things on the spur of the moment. How do 
you do it ? I'm always trying." 

" Don't be satirical, my dear," said Lady 



Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler 35 

Wolverhampton ; ''it is bad manners, and 
doesn't suit your child-like cast of counte- 
nance. The thing is so simple that it is 
naturally inexplicable. I just jot down these 
little jeiix d'esprit as I work them out in 
bed, or at church, or when Wolverhampton 
is talking to me ; and then I run through 
them before paying calls or receiving people. 
No impromptu ever has a true air of spon- 
taneity unless it has been ' made at leisure.' " 

" A most original paradox, my lady," said 
Lord Bathbrick. 

" I wish, Bathbrick, you would not keep 
on throwing my title in my teeth," said 
Lady Wolverhampton. " Such things are 
taken for granted and never mentioned 
among well-bred people. They ought to 
resemble the abstract noun in the definition 
of the small board-school girl : ' An abstract 
noun is a thing that every one knows of but 
nobody talks about — like Mary's leg/ As 
for paradoxes, I begin to fear their mode is 
passed ; the latest piquancy is only to be 
found in truisms. Nowadays, if you say in 
the good old-fashioned manner, ' Charity is 
the one unpardonable sin,' nobody pretends 



36 Borrowed Plumes 

not to understand you ; whereas if you say, 
* There is nothing so essentially feminine as 
a woman,' people suspect a hidden meaning 
and try to conceal their uncomfortableness." 

" But how do you manage," asked Ethel- 
frida, ** to run off all these epigrams in the 
course of a conversation withe ut any appa- 
rent solution of logical continuity ? " 

" Tact, my dear, tact. To absorb the 
conversation yourself is a sign of ill-breed- 
ing ; nice people reach the same result by 
ignoring interruptior ; or, what is better 
still, and corresponds to the sleight-of-hand 
by which a card is forced, you compel the 
others involuntarily to lead up to your next 
remark. This is easy enough in books 
where the author has it all his own way ; 
but in real life it requires tact, as I just now 
observed." 

" But suppose you found yourself con- 
versing with somebody possessed of equal 
tact ? " asked Ethelfrida, with that slight 
air of ennui which is characteristic of spoilt 
women of the world. 

" I never do," said Lady Wolverhamp- 
ton. " It would be too tiresome sitting there 



Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler 37 

like a Christy Minstrel with a black face 
saying funny things in your turn." 

" Yes," said Lord Bathbrick, " and begin- 
ning every time with ' That reminds me of 
a story.' " 

" I know : and it never really does remind 
them. What they mean is, ' Your stupid 
interruption nearly put my next good story 
out of my head. It was about, &c.' " 

" I wonder," said Ethelfrida, with a touch 
of bitterness at the thin end of her tongue, 
" that you have never written a book. It 
would be so very clever." 

*' My dear," said Lady Wolverhampton, 
*' I can't afford to do it. It would be like 
killing the goose that lays the nuggets. 
Besides, it might have a vulgar success ; and 
that would be so tiresome. And then I could 
never manage the plot. You see, well-bred 
people hardly ever have plots in their lives. 
The very word always makes me think of a 
kitchen garden in a pauper's allotment. I 
once had an idea about a girl like yourself, 
blest with all the good things of life, includ- 
ing a pretty face and a long tongue, with 
which she lashed every lover whom she sus- 



38 Borrowed Plumes 

pected of wanting her money. But at last 
the real Dan Cupid, as she called him, came 
her way. He was quite a nice boy, and 
sound on vaccination and that sort of thing, 
but he fought shy of her money and her long 
tongue. She had never been in love before, 
and she was much too clever to understand 
how so easy a thing is done. So she thought 
she would get a testimonial of his honesty, 
as if he were applying for a place as butler." 

*' Or cook ? " suggested Lord Bathbrick. 

" Or cook, as you say. But don't inter- 
rupt me, Bathbrick. Well, she gave out 
that she had a destitute twin sister, hope- 
lessly estranged, and no better than she 
should be. This twin was the speaking 
image of her, only dressed dowdily, and with 
her hair done just anyhow. And the nice 
boy met the penniless girl and fell in love 
with her. Twin No. i had only got to 
frumple her hair, put on a misfit and shorten 
her tongue, and she was transformed, as by 
magic, into twin No. 2 ; and the nice boy 
would never have found out that there was 
only one of them, if she had not confessed. 
And then he was sick to death at the trick 



Ellen Thorney croft Fowler 39 

and said she was no gentlewoman. You 
know how touchy men are on these ridicu- 
lously trivial points of honour." 

**Yes, I know," said Ethelfrida; ''whereas 
you, dear, would consider that you had been 
untrue to your feminine instincts if any man 
suspected you of having scruples." 

Lady Wolverhampton took a short breath 
abstractedly. 

" Well," she continued, '' the girl apolo- 
gised ; which, of course, no womanly girl 
would ever do; with the result that he ran 
away and went on with being a soldier some- 
where in India. Oh, of course she got him 
back all right in tlie last chapter ; but the 
whole thing was too absurd for words. Not 
that that matters much with the public : they 
forgive an improbably stupid plot, if only 
the dialogue is impossibly clever; which mine 
was. But, as I said, I found I could not 
afford to publish all my best epigrams, with 
openings to match. And that reminds me 
that I must be off, as I have some people to 
dinner, and there is a new phrase-book to 
run through. Good-bye, my dear ; so many 
thanks for your charming conversatio'ti. 
Come along, Bathbrick." 



40 Borrowed Plumes 

[The Farringdons.] 

*'Vm sure Eton will win," said Lady 
Kidderminster, oracularly. " Look at their 
colours ; it's a struggle between the powers 
of light and the powers of darkness, like 
the war in China." 

" They can't exactly win/' said Lord 
Gosling ; " you see, it's a tie already." 

" You were always so practical and pro- 
saic. Gosling. But if it's a tie why aren't 
they satisfied to stop, instead of running 
about in the sun and making everybody feel 
so hot, and noisy ? " 

*' Ties are made to be broken," said Lord 
Tommy. " And yet half the people here 
want this tie not to be broken. It's rather 
like the different parties in a Divorce 
Court." 

" Unless there is no defence," said Lady 
Kidderminster. 

" But there's a very good defence going 
on at the wickets," said Lord Tommy. 

" Or else collusion," continued her lady- 
ship, " as when Kidderminster proposed to 
me. I wish they wouldn't shout so : it 



Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler 41 

makes you forget the things you were going 
to say. Oh, Harrow's won, have they ? I 
knew they would ! " 

^ * H« ^Is 

" You were very reserved at Lord's the 
other day, Mr. Quarquar," said Deborah. 
" Were you out of dream-sympathy with the 
rushing world of frivolity ? " 

'' I suppose your fine friends are very 
brilliant and scintillating. Miss Alders- 
gate?" replied Quarquar, bitterly; ''but I 
found their conversation lacking in intensity 
of purpose. My soul seemed to stretch out 
to you across a wilderness of fatuities." 

He spoke with that indefinable charm 
which so often imposes upon the amateur 
female artist. 

" You must not judge them too harshly," 
said Deborah. '' Genius like yours should 
be generous to the foibles of others less 
gifted. It was not their fault that they 
were born to the purple." 

" I glory," said Quarquar, " in the fact 
that I am essentially middle-class without 
being too obviously vulgar. After all, these 
blue-blooded worldlings only tolerate you. 



42 Borrowed Plumes 

They would never invite you to share their 
future, as I at this moment invite you." 

'' I admit," repHed Deborah, '' that I find 
you sympathetic. I respect your artistic 
talent, particularly in the matter of colour- 
schemes and backgrounds; and I have the 
true woman's desire to improve you. But 
can I, on this account, be accurately de- 
scribed as entertaining a passionate love for 
you?" 

" Assuredly," replied Quarquar. 

"Then I will take till Michaelmas to 
think it over," said Deborah. '' But it upsets 
all my previous calculations to feel so unde- 
cided. Everything seems to conspire in your 
favour ; you paint, you are earnest, you need 
improving, and you are unmarried; yet — if 
you don't much mind — I will take the rest 
of the current quarter to think it over." 



IV. 

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S 
LOVE-LETTERS. 

My Dear Aunt,— I am about to send 
you a heavy batch of love-letters. Do not 
be shocked. I recognise that we are within 
the prohibited degrees. They are only 
female-love-letters made out of my head. 
You will understand that I have disguised 
my sex; reversing, out of deference to mod- 
ern feeling, the process of George Eliot and 
others. I was naturally tempted to call my 
zvork '' The Love-Letters of Elizabeth/' 
that name being now almost de rigueur in 
the trade; but I have been content to say 
''An Englishwoman has done this thing." 
You might be good enough to get them pub- 
lished for me, and afFix a preface {in a dif- 
ferent style from that of the letters) saying, 
(i) that they were originally sacred and 
meant for the eyes of One Only ; (2) that 
43 



44 Borrowed Plumes 

the author is dead; (3) that exceptional 
circumstances have arisen, &c.; and (4) 
anything else that may occur to you as likely 
to intrigue the public. I am sending them to 
you because you are the only woman that I 
know at all well whose handwriting is at 
once feminine and legible. This is necessary 
for imposing on a publisher's innocence. I 
shall trust you to amend anything that 
strikes you as too unladylike ; and, in the 
hope that you will kindly remit profits to me 
at the old address, I sign myself. 

Your ever anonymous. 

Nephew. 
* * * * 

Brightest and Best, — This is the first 
of a long and steady series of love-letters 
that are to come from my swelling heart. 
Need I say that they are not for publica- 
tion? No eye but yours, not even your 
butler's, must ever see them. I have a trunk 
full of letters of responsive love, written 
daily during the weary six months of our 
blossoming friendship. Each was ready 
stamped at the time, in case your proposal 
arrived before the bag went out. And now, 



Love-Letters 45 

at last, at last, I have hooked you. Dear fish ! 

and you are man enough to imagine the 

victory yours! See, I give my sex away, 

and am too glad to blush! I never blush 

now. Till to-morrow. 

Your Compleat Angler. 
* * * * 

Most Thoroughly Beloved, — Had you 
an egg for breakfast ? I had. I take a new 
and absorbing interest in myself, now that I 
am part of you! As a child I have been 
radiantly happy over mud pies. I must 
believe now that somewhere your dear hands 
were contemporaneously busy with the same 
luscious compound. Otherwise the joy I 
then had is inexplicable. I was to tell you 
of a wasp on my window-sill, and a new 
dress, also with a sting in its tail, into whose 
making I have put all my love for you, and 
how I saw a rabbit, during the transit of 
Venus, sucking dandelions on the lawn ; but 
I am so fearful that you will look for 
mysteries between the lines, and despair of 
following me. Your ever amorous. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Own, — Shall we give each other names 



46 Borrowed Plumes 

from the stars, that we may wink together 
when apart? Yes? Then I will be Virgo, 
and you shall be the Great Bear that hugs 
me. It is my birthday, and you did not 
know ! Somehow, I could not tell you : so 
strange a thing is a really nice woman's 
reserve. 



Most Patient, — The post has this 
moment gone with my letter, finished just in 
time. So I sit down to begin another. I 
could go on writing without a break except 
for meals ; but pity is at the heart of my love. 

5jC 5{C 5fC 5{C 

Loveliest, — You have won the right to 
know my past. I will not withhold from 
you that an intermittent fever, something 
like nettle-rash, used to possess me when I 
dreamed of one day being a maker of books. 
Now that I have you, I have no care for a 
larger public. And, indeed, it is a man's 
career. For woman there is love and there 
is beauty. My heart is my warrant for the 
one; for the other, it ripens daily in my 
mirror. Happy Mercury! though perhaps 



Love-Letters 47 

it is for you, rather than me, to say it. 

Please say it. 

* * * * 

My Star, My Great Bear, — I have 
your very own letter acknowledging my six 
last, which seem to have arrived by consecu- 
tive posts. You ask me if I do not weary 
myself, and whether I could not contrive to 
say a little less. Dear Altruist! I do not, 
and I could not, if I tried. 

Your importunate 

* * * * 

Absent yet Present, — What, what is 
this of your sickness, and me not by to touch 
the spot ? To think that you should be laid 
up with '' servant's knee" ! Why, it is I, who 
am one large genuflexion at your feet, that 
should suffer in that sort. Do not fear that 
I should love you less, though both your 
knees should perish utterly. You are you, 
and cannot essentially change. I send you 
Browning's Jocoseria for a love-potion. 
Your Nana (not Zola's, but meaning your 

Nurse that would be). 

* * * * 

Poor, poor, — So the medicine was worse 



48 Borrowed Plumes 

than the disease, and the " servant's knee '' 
has given place to a strain in your dear 
mind? It was thoughtless to send you 
Browning, when you were too weak to bear 
him. Be appeased, beloved! Where your 
mother has failed, it will take something 
more than Browning to sever us. Here is 
Baedeker in his stead, that you may picture 
me in Italy, for which I start next week. 
My body, that is, for my spirit will bestride 
your pillow. In Paradise, I think, there will 
be no side-saddles. Ever your astral. 



Never doubt me, dearest. I would not 
dream of setting up my opinion against 
yours. I have seen your mother but once; 
you must have met her far, far, oftener. 
But then, I think, she could never have 
accused you, even tacitly, of suffering from 
hereditary madness. Here, quite humbly, 
I have the advantage of you in my experi- 
ence of her. Forgive my presumption; you 
know how easily I would lay down my life 
for you at the first soiipgon of your wish 
that way. When will you put me to the 
test ? To-morrow ? Then it must be by the 



Love-Letters 49 

morning post, as we leave in the afternoon 
for the Continent, where my address is 
uncertain. Moribunda te saluto. 

Dearest Innominato, — You have my 
letters, one from Dover, two from the Calais' 
buffet, and a post-card from each end of the 
St. Gothard Tunnel? Arno is under me as 
I write. The architecture of Florence is 
aldermanic : it glorifies the municipal idea. 
One misses the reach-me-up of the soaring 
Gothic. I am just back from the Academia 
delle Belle Arti. (You don't mind my spell- 
ing it with only one c ? It is a weakness I 
cannot conquer.) I thought I knew my 
Lippo of the prim Madonnas, that so belie 
the known levity of their model. But one 
has first to see his '' Coronation," where his 
own portrait shows most profane among 
" the flowery, bowery angel-brood," beside 
the brazen " little lily-thing " who makes 
apology for his intrusion (and hers, too, for 
that matter) with her unanswerable '' Iste 
perfecit opus.'' Lucky '' St. Lucy " ! If I 
were Florentine, and not, as you know, an 
Englishwoman abroad, engaged to be mar- 



50 Borrowed Plumes 

ried, and could choose from all this city's 
centuries a man to love, certainly this same 
Lippo should have my heart. 

" Flower o' the broom, 
Take away love and our earth is a tomb." 

Whoever — it should not be Lucrezia's half- 
souled del Sarto, though he does get more 
atmosphere into his work than most of them. 
How Browning has made these dead bones 
live for us with his touch of Fancy, re-creat- 
ing Fact ! But I forgot ; you begged me, as 
I loved you, not to mention him. Yet he, 
too, wrote love-letters ; as I have heard, for I 
would never suffer myself to read them; 
such a desecration it seems to have given 
them to the gaping public. Dearest, you 
would never allow this sacrilege, I well 
know. Still, now that I glance through my 
remarks on Lippo it seems too pretty a piece 
of writing to fade unseen of the general eye 
of man. Might we not, after all, some day 
print extracts from such of my letters as 
seem to have a permanent value for the 
world? For instance, I shall have some 
fresh thoughts on the Renaissance to send 
you in my next. 



Love-Letters 5 1 

But I have omitted all this while to say 
that your face, and yours only, fills every 
canvas here. Kiss your mother for me. 
This is not a joke. Addio! Buoni sogni! 

^ >p ^ >|c 

Out of a gondola " I send my heart up to 
thee, all my heart.'' I want you here in 
Venice, to hold you by the hand and teach 
you things about Art not to be found even in 
Baedeker. I should be the man, and you 
would be the woman — ^in this Kingdom by 
the Sea, as Mr. Swinburne said of Georges 
Sand and De Musset. You have heard of 
these people, beloved? 

My Italian betters itself. I had a fancy, 
when I saw Dogana written up in the rail- 
way station on my arrival here, that it was 
the feminine of Doge and so should mean 
the Sea, because the Doges used to wed it 
with a ring. Of course, it was really the 
Custom House (Douane). We call our pet 
gondolier Ippopotamo, because, for lack of 
cabs, he is our river-horse. Who was the 
old lady who complained that she did not see 
Venice under favourable conditions, as it 
was flooded f No thought but of you. 



52 Borrowed Plumes 

SH 5^ -K 5}t 

By all means, dearest, make an armistice 

with your mother, and let us all go into 

winter-quarters. I remember, the first (and 

only) time I saw her, she had such an air of 

maternity that I almost asked her if she 

knew you were out. Frankly, beloved, she 

is really rather an old hen; or shall we say 

she is most (or should it be more) like 

Calverley's parroquet that declined to die? 

It was imbecile, too, you know; the very 

epithet your mother applied, by implication, 

to my mother. Still, I must love her a little, 

since, but for her, how could I have known 

you ? In any case, my whole love to her son. 
* * * * 

Most Near^ — This must be a very, very 
short letter, as I can hear your horse's gallop 
in the lane. You are coming, beloved, you 
are coming! 



I am just returned from the gate. It was 
the butcher's boy. I kissed his feet from 
mere association of ideas. You are not 
jealous? He is nothing, nothing to me, 
except that just now he seemed to take your 
rightful place. See, I lay my cheek on the 



Love-Letters 5 3 

words that will soon glow under your eyes. 
There, I have a black smudge on my nose, 
and am in mourning for myself. Lay your 
nose, dearest, where mine has left the paper 
still warm. Your impressionable. 

* * * sK 

Gracious, — This is very sudden. Your 
dear letter says that I must understand we 
parted for ever last Tuesday at 3.30 p. m. 
Ah! these things should not be written. 
Come to me, come, and with your own lips 
repeat this remark; and then by that very 
act you will belie yourself with lovely 
perjury. I would say much more, but my 
pen, for the first time within my knowledge, 
refuses. This must show you how strangely 
I am your distraught. 

jk * * * 

Of course, my Prince, if you mean it, I 
must release you. But nothing shall ever 
make me stop waiting. Do not imagine me 
capable of such self-effacement. There is a 
big empty play-box upstairs, which I am 
having made into a dead-letter office. There 
will be pigeon-holes to take the little essays 
which, out of my great love for you, I 



54 Borrowed Plumes 

promise not to post. You are right in say- 
ing- that I am the most generous woman you 
have ever met. 

>lC ^ 5|C 3)C 

Great Heart, — I would have you know 
that there are consolations. If you had let 
me marry you, as I have so consistently 
urged, that might have been the end of my 
love-letters. Now there is no limit set them 
but the grave. My pen was always jealous 
of your presence. Now it knows it is the 
dearest thing I ever grasp. 

* * 5JS * 

I do not propose to outlive my happiness 
very long. And, indeed, my own mother 
died when I was seven. In one of my letters 
I told you my family was long-lived on both 
sides. This, of course, was not true; but I 
wrote it just after your mother had hinted 
that my " stock " was not very good stuff. 
Your sorry. 

I seek in vain for help from the grief of 
poets. Words ! words ! a tagging of epi- 
taphs that makes me sick. " Cest aimer peti 
que de pouvoir dire comhien Von aime/' 
And the same with sorrow, only more so. If 



Love-Letters 55 

I thought that any eye but yours would 
penetrate the secret of my woe, I would 
destroy these letters unwritten; or else be 
more careful about the spelling of my 
Italian. 

I cannot stain this paper with tears as I 
could have wished. Why will they not 
come at call, like ink ? At each eyelid hangs 
one, but only semi-detached, like a Brixton 
villa. You see, I am not so sad but I can 
still compass some happy turn of thought 
like this. Your ever ingenious. 

Ht H< * * 

Beloved Orphan, — Light lie the earth 
on your mother's head. So short a while 
ago, and I would not have believed that I 
could one day hear of her death unmoved. 
Yet this morning, when the news came, I 
could not raise so much as a feeble smile. 
Well, she has had her will; and now she 
has *' gone to her place " — not mine, let me 
trust. Dearest, you will never have another 
mother like her; nor I, it seems, a mother- 
in-law of any sort. 

* * * * 

Dear Only Reader (if any), — I was 



56 Borrowed Plumes 

born with a penchant for descriptive letters, 
and had I meant these for the public eye I 
should have made your personality shine 
more speakingly through them. How should 
the world know just what you are to me 
from a passing reference to your check 
riding-breeches and side- whiskers? And that 
is so long past. By now you must have 
replaced the one; and the other you may 
have shaved away in a paroxysm of regret. 

I think I could have lost you almost cheer- 
fully if I had only been told why. One of 
the saddest memories of my childhood (I 
was two at the time) is concerned with a 
tale my Nana told me, of a poor wronged 
woman — was she a Queen of Spain, or 
somebody in Tom Hood? — whose true love 
left her on a rumour that she had a wooden 
leg. She was condemned unheard, and the 
sentence was practically capital. Like me, 
she never even knew the charge against her ; 
partly for the stringency of etiquette, and 
in part through the proper sensitiveness of 
her lover, who must, I think, a little have 
resembled you, beloved. 

As a child — perhaps already nursing my 



Love-Letters 57 

woman's seed of uncomplaining sorrow — 
the story touched me poignantly. Arthur, 
on the other hand, who also was present at 
its telling, has no memory of it. But then 
he was my junior, being barely out of long- 
clothes. 

jjs iK * * 

Most Stolid, — This is my last letter, 
positively. The doctors give me till to- 
morrow to break up. Are you interested to 
learn the cause? No? Then I must still 
tell you. / am dying of Curiosity. It is the 
woman's ruling passion — that, and love- 
letter-writing in my case — strong even to 
the death. 

Many unsolicited answers to our conun- 
drum — yours and mine, beloved, for all that 
is yours is mine — have been sent in to me by 
good-natured people, perfect strangers to 
me, most of them. One writes, quite 
gently, hazarding the theory that you were 
bored by me. Well-meant, but manifestly 
absurd. Another guesses that, suddenly, 
you have recognised your own mother's 
madness, and shrank from reproducing it.^ 
Some of these solutions are too paltry to 



58 Borrowed Plumes 

repeat; and one of them unmentionable on 
other grounds. 

In my secret heart — it may have been 
through unconscious association with the 
story of the wooden leg — I half believe that 
when I called your attention, perhaps with 
too careless a pride, to the Norman tint in 
my veins, you gathered, from the eloquence 
of my love, that their blueness was really 
due to the presence of ink in my blood. 
Well, whatever — I would shed its last drop 
for you. Your always most effusive. 



y. 

MR. HALL CAINE. 

[The Eternal City.] 

Note. — The author, in attempting to follow 
Mr. Hall Caine in his latest flights of 
actuality, wishes to cast no sort of 
reflection upon any extant Monarch or 
Official of State whom he has found it 
convenient to introduce for the pur- 
poses of Art. 

It was the dawn of a new century, practi- 
cally contemporary with the present. By 
an edict of the young, pale King Epami- 
nondas L, this unusual event was to be 
marked by the inauguration of a colossal 
scheme for restoring the Parthenon. A 
Jubilee Procession to the Acropolis had 
been arranged with a view of reviving the 
splendours of the ancient Panathenaic 
59 



6o Borrowed Plumes 

festival. All Athens had been notified to 
attend. 

In the great Square (plateia) of the Con- 
stitution a vast and motley crowd was 
assembled. Here was the Athenian Demos, 
ever ready, as in the days of the Christian 
Era, to see something new. Politicians of 
the cafe (estiatoria) might be seen sipping 
their sweet masticha, or munching Greekish 
delight (ghikumi) inlaid with pistacchio 
nuts. In the midst of animated conversation 
they were telling the beads of their secular 
rosaries, as occupation for their restless 
hands. Here were shepherds from distant 
Nomarchies, Slavs from Boeotia, Rouman- 
ians from Acarnania, clad in capotes of 
goat's-hair, or red vests and baggy trousers, 
green and blue. Here were Albanian peas- 
ant-women in long shirts with broidered 
sleeves and leather girdle, and the glint of 
sequins in their hair. Here were local 
Demarchs swelling with importance; there a 
street Arab crying his sigarocharto (cigar- 
ette papers) at 25 lepta, or about 2^c^. the 
packet; or a newspaper-boy shouting 
Ephemeris! or Astu! (the names of party- 



Mr. Hall Caine 6i 

organs). There again was an archimandrite 
rubbing elbows with a parish Papa in his 
conical hat, long hair and dark gown; and, 
mixed with these, the foreign tourist, recog- 
nisable by his alien speech and appearance. 

On the balcony of the Prime Minister's 
Palace, overlooking the Square of the Con- 
stitution, the flower of Athenian beauty and 
chivalry had gathered, along with the Min- 
isters accredited from the various European 
Courts, the Vatican amongst them. They 
were greeting one another in terms of aris- 
tocratic familiarity, such as Kale mera 
(good day), or ydssou (your health!). 
From group to group flitted the charming 
Princess Vevifwiski, a Russian blonde with 
cockatoo plumes rising from a Parisian 
toque, now tapping a General of Cavalry 
with her lorgnette, now ogling an attache 
behind her fan. Scandal was the topic of 
the hour. 

In an adjoining salon the Prime Minister, 
M. Rallipapia, having dismissed his Cabinet 
and the corps diplomatique, W2is now closeted 
with the heads of the Army, the Navy and 
the Auxiliary Forces, the Chief of Police, 



62 Borrowed Plumes 

the Mayors of Athens and the Piraeus, the 
Directors of the Foreign Schools of Archaeo- 
logy, and the Commandante of the Fire 
Brigade. The face of the Premier, who was 
faultlessly dressed with a crimson peony in 
his button-hole, was that of a man habitu- 
ated to command, and unscrupulous in the 
methods by which he attained his ends. 

" You, gentlemen," he said, turning to 
the Archaeologists, " have guaranteed the 
stability of the ruins of the Acropolis during 
to-day's ordeal, earthquakes excepted; I do 
not anticipate a fracas in any other quarter. 
But," — and here he fixed a sombre eye upon 
the various officials grouped about him — ''at 
the first sign of disturbance, I have only to 
fire the cannon on my Palace-roof, connected 
with my watch-fob by the Marconi system, 
and you will at once block the passes to 
Eleusis and Marathon, hock the horses in 
the hipposiderodromi (tramways), blow up 
the suburban lines, turn the municipal hose 
on to the main squares and streets, and 
arrest every one who cannot establish his 
identity by the name on his shirt-collar." 

" Malista, Kyrie (certainly, honoured 



Mr. Hall Caine 63 

Sir)," replied the officials, as they bowed 
themselves out backwards. 

Meanwhile, a thrill of tense expectation 
animated the brilliant company that 
thronged the reception rooms. Suddenly, up 
the stairs of Pentelican marble, ornamented 
with low prehistoric reliefs, came a pene- 
trating whiff of ottar of patchouli, followed 
almost immediately by a full round figure, 
with a face radiant as a lark, and dewy as 
Aphrodite fresh-risen from the foam. Her 
smile, which embraced everybody, including 
perfect strangers, seemed to permeate her 
whole being, from the Gainsborough hat 
(with its wreath of natural edelweiss) to 
the astrachan gaiters, slashed with priceless 
ermine. 

'' Dearest Athena ! " cried the Princess 
Vevifwiski, as her rouged lips imprinted a 
peck, soft as a dove's, and hypocritical as 
a hawk's, on the daffodil complexion of the 
full round beauty ; ''' mais, mon Dieu, how 
ravishing a toilette, and what blooming 
cheeks ! " She spoke in fluent French, the 
invariable medium of expression in the best 
court circles. 



64 Borrowed Plumes 

"Who is she?" asked the new English 
Minister, Lord Tiro, addressing himself to 
the Plenipotentiary Representative of the 
United States. 

" My! Not to know her, Viscount, argues 
yourself unknow^n," replied General Goatee. 
" Why, I guess she just walks around with 
the Prime Minister and runs this yere Gov- 
ernment on her own, Pro-digious ! " 

''Ah!" said the English Minister, ''she 
has a past. I saw that at a glance. But tell 
me, General, for I am fresh to the work, 
what is the nature of the ambitions that 
govern this ancient Hellenic race in regard 
to their political status ? " 

" Sir," said the American, " I will figure 
it up for you right here. Ever since that 
Cretan business this one-horse Government 
has been afflicted with notions. They reckon 
to rejuvenate the Pan'lenic instinct, and 
start fair again with a slap-up new Parthe- 
non. In view of the im'nent dissolution of 
the Turkish Empire, of which you, as a 
Britisher, may not have had any pre-moni- 
tion, they are pegging out moral claims on a 
thickish slab of Thessaly. That's so." 



Mr. Hall Caine 65 

" You astonish me," said the Viscount. 
" My Government has given me no infor- 
mation of this contingency. But I shall have 
my eyes open." 

" A bright man, Sir, this Rallipapia, and 
no flies on him. Reads his Byron (not for- 
getting Don Juan, you bet ! ) and has mili- 
tary aspirations, and means to knock sparks 
out of the European concert; if only this 
all-fired Demos don't call his hand over the 
olive-tax." 

"Ah! the People!" said the British 
Minister, pensively, '' one has always to 
reckon with the People where there is a 
tradition of democracy." 

The Jubilee Procession had begun. The 
van of the resplendent cortege had already 
traversed the Street of Hermes, wheeled by 
the Church of Kapnikarea, and debouched 
on the Square of the Temple of the Winds, 
heading for the sacred ascent of the Propy- 
laea. 

" Holy Martyrs ! " cried Athena, as she 
leaned her full round shape over the balus- 
trade, " what a picture ! See the procession, 
how it unwinds its apparently interminable 
5 



66 Borrowed Plumes 

coils amid the multitudinous populace, and 
bristles like a gigantic boa-constrictor 
threading the countless ripple of the jungle.'" 

In another moment she had forgotten the 
sequence of her remarks in a delicious 
ecstasy of personal detail. 

" There's a battalion of Euzoni ! " she 
cried in childish glee, with a flash of her 
mulberry eyes. '' Look at their Albanian 
uniform, with the fez, and the embroidered 
jacket with open sleeves, and the full white 
petticoat, or fustanella, and the red shoes 
turned up at the toes. That man with the 
grimy face is from the mines at Laurion, 
where they get from two to twenty pounds 
of silver for every ton of lead. And there's 
the dear Metropolitan himself in the funny 
high hat ! Fancy their calling the Paris 
underground railway after him ! And, oh, 
look! There's M. Zola, who writes novels. 
He*s taking notes for a volume on Athens. 
And Mrs. Humphry Ward, too, on the same 
tack. And there's the famous Signorina 
Marie Corelli. That makes three. She 
comes from Stratford-on-the-Avon. Oh, 
yes, I was brought up in England. And, 



Mr. Hall Caine 67 

talking of Stratford, if there isn't the blessed 
spook of Shakspeare ! No, it isn't. It's the 
great Master, Hall Caine, with his nice little 
red Baedeker, and a green grammar of 
Modern Greek. He's going to out-Corelli 
the Signorina. On dit, there is no love lost 
there. And that makes four. All on the 
same tack. Why, no more English people 
need ever come to Athens. They can get it 
at the lending bibliothekes! " 

Her brilliant flow of comment flooded the 
noontide air, heavy with the scent of honey 
wafted from the purple slopes of Hymettus. 
At her back there was that constant tittering 
and whispering behind fans which is de 
riguetir in the highest quarters. Aspasia 
and Pompadour were among the allusive 
names which passed from lip to lip. 

" And where, I wonder, is my dear 
Anarchist, the Honorable Dotti? I know I 
shall lose my heart to him. And I want him 
so to sit as a model for Harmodius, or else 
Aristogeiton, who slew the tyrant. You 
know, of course," she cried, throwing a 
dazzling glance from her mulberry eyes 
upon the company, '' that I have been asked 



68 Borrowed Plumes 

by the Board of Works to do a fresco for 
the wall-paper of the new Parthenon. You 
must all of you come to the private view." 
The invitation was received with well-simu- 
lated rapture. The Prime Minister had just 
entered, twirling his moustaches with a 
confident air of proprietorship. 

A quivering vibration passed through the 
crowd below, as in a play just before the 
ghost comes on. This was followed by a 
muttering, vague as distant thunder, faintly 
audible as a tideless sea. All eyes were 
directed to a figure that was climbing up an 
electric lamp-post immediately under the 
balcony of the Premier's Palace. It was 
Deemster Dotti. His face was as green as 
an olive, yet as bold as a beacon. 

" Euphemeite, O politai! Citizens, hush 
your tongues to holy silence ! " he began in 
the formula familiar to all in whom flowed 
the blood of the old Athenian people. '' I 
am not Demosthenes that I should declaim 
from the Pnyx; nor the Apostle that I 
should address you from the Areopagus : but 
the spirit of both still animates me even on 
this precarious point of vantage. Brothers, 



Mr. Hall Caine 69 

we are to-day the victims of a cruel farce. 
Under the guise of restoring the fraternal 
beauty of an ancient Republic, the Govern- 
ment, ambitious of a higher place in the 
Councils of Europe, is but riveting more 
firmly the fetters about your patient necks." 

Murmurs of dissent and approval floated 
up from the multitude. '' Kalo (bravo! ) '" 
" Siga (shut up!) " '^ Go it, cockey ! " 

" People of the Eternal City of the Violet 
Crown ! It is a true Republic that we want 
to restore, the Republic of Manhood. We 
want no Kings, no Governments, no Army, 
no Navy, no Auxiliary Forces, no Fire 
Brigade! We want no Prime Minister 
sucking the people's veins while he toys with 
the tangles of a Phryne's locks ! " 

"Eu! eu!" "To the crows with him!" 
" Good old Dotti ! " 

'' Yet let us not move through rapine and 
violence to noble ends. Let us simply 
express opinions. Let us convince by moral 
suasion. Let our motto be — For Others! 
Everything for Everybody else!'' 

The peroration, designedly conciliatory, 
was lost in the sudden roar of a cannon from 



"JO Borrowed Plumes 

the Prime Minister's roof. This was fol- 
lowed by a terrific explosion on the down 
line of the Piraeus railway. Fountains of 
red blood spurted from the flanks of their 
chargers as the mounted police bore down 
upon the crowd with fixed carbines. Hon- 
orable Dotti had raised his arm to implore 
the people not to resist, when a live jet of 
water from the municipal hose caught him 
full between the eyes, felling him to the foot 
of the lamp-post. 

The brilliant gathering on the balcony 
had melted away like snow towards the 
back-door. As they streamed through the 
gorgeous saloons, tittering behind their 
fans, a quick ear might have overheard a 
ripple of the best society gossip. " Well, I 
never!" ''Who'd have thought?" "What'll 
the boss do with it ? " '' That's one for the 
minx ! " 

As the curtain fell upon this first act of 
the modern Athenian drama, the full round 
form of Athena, her beauty strangely 
altered, was lying in the Cabinet Chamber 
prone across a despatch-box. The Prime 
Minister stood above her, still faultlessly 



Mr. Hall Caine 71 

dressed and twirling the waxed ends of his 
inscrutable moustaches. 

* * * * 

The rays of the afternoon sun fell in rich 
blotches of golden glory on the walls of 
Athena's studio underneath the Hill of the 
Demi-Nymphs. Palette in hand, her pre- 
hensile fingers were rapidly blocking out in 
the plastic clay the features of the great 
Athenian Martyr. As the temperature of 
her feelings towards her model had moved 
up from the zero of hatred to the boiling 
point (80^ Reaumur) of passionate worship, 
so the bust had successively represented 
Cleon (the brawling demagogue), Alcibia- 
des, Herodotus, Themistocles, Aristides, and 
finally Socrates himself. The work, when 
accomplished, was to be a pleasant surprise 
for the model, who had always been looking 
the other way. 

The door opened. " Honorable Dotti ! " 
cried the butler, and withdrew without 
comment. The Deputy entered carrying a 
large mpaoulo (trunk) heavily padlocked. 
He gave a quiet sniff of satisfaction as he 
recognised the familiar perfume of patchouli. 



72 Borrowed Plumes 

Then silently, as if by the force of a habit 
which he was powerless to arrest, he 
stepped to the throne, wrought of Parian 
marble and draped with Phoenician byssos 
(a kind of linen, not so diaphanous as Coan 
silk) and assumed a bust-like attitude with 
his back to the artist. There was an expres- 
sion on his face. It was the spirit of out- 
raged Justice. The atmosphere of the studio 
tingled with suppressed passion. As the 
salient features of Socrates leaped into actu- 
ality under her rapid touch, it seemed to 
Athena that she could not resist the impulse 
to infuse some of her own superfluous 
warmth into the lifeless clay. Furtively she 
kissed the Martyr's clammy nose. It was 
the connubial instinct. For the moment she 
was playing the part of Xantippe. 

The silence was broken by Dotti's voice, 
the relic of a noble organ ruined by the prac- 
tice of addressing outdoor crowds in the 
teeth of a brutal constabulary. 

** Athena," he said, " my soul has learned 
to trust in your discretion and the purity of 
your motives ever since that hour in my 
bachelor attic when you introduced yourself 



Mr. Hall Caine 73 

to me in an evening dress that displayed the 
full round ripeness of your youth and 
beauty. I will now proceed to read aloud to 
you a little thing of my own composition. It 
is the draft of a poster giving instructions to 
the Great Over-taxed how to behave at our 
mass-meeting to-morrow night under the 
columns of Zeus Olympios. For days they 
have been coming in from far and near ; not 
only from Attica and the Peloponnese, but 
from the uttermost isles of the Archipelago. 
I ought, perhaps, to say that the splendid 
paradox of the opening sentence is taken 
verbatim from the pen of the Master. I 
have printed the passage in small caps." 

" Go on, Daniel Dotti," said Athena. 
" My heart is with you. But don't look 
round." 

The Deputy took a long breath and began. 
Never had his face so closely resembled the 
Bust as at this moment. 

'^Friends, Athenians, Countrymen! the 

SKY IS DARK^ THE HEAVENS ARE VOID, WE 
ARE TRAVELLING BENEATH THE STORM- 
CLOUD. Yet it has the customary silver 
lining. It is the dawn of the Milky Way, 



74 Borrowed Plumes 

though still no bigger than a man's hand. 
Come, then, to the Olympieion in your 
myriads, leaving behind your poniards and 
shot-guns. Let each man wear his own hair 
with a simple branch of olive tzvined about it. 
It shall be at once a symbol of Peace, and a 
protest against the olive-tax. Do not provoke 
violence. The hired soldiers, themselves 
your down-trodden brothers, would be 
reluctantly tempted to retaliate. Do nothing, 
or you will surely be done by. Simply 
assemble and talk. Better still, just listen to 
me. Respect property. Pay honour to 
vested interests. Remember Thermopylce! 
Remember Salamis! To-morrow after dark; 
say about 8.30. Daniel Dotti/" 

"Beautiful, isn't it?" cried Athena. 
" And now tell me something about your 
past. I feel I must have met you in another 
and a better world." There was a passionate 
appeal in her mulberry eyes, " My child," 
enquired Dotti, " are you strong enough to 
bear the truth?" "Try me," she said. 
With that, having drawn down the blinds, 
he extracted from the trunk a phono-cine- 
mato-biograph with oxy-hydrogen lantern 



Mr. Hall Caine 75 

complete. Fixing them in position, he 
cleared his throat and started : — 

" Constantly harried by the police in my 
capacity of Friend of Man, yet never, even 
in my most rapid movements — even when 
my very boots were an impediment — have I 
consented to part with this ingeniously 
complicated instrument, my sole memento of 
the noblest Exile I ever clapped eyes on." 

Athena's attention had now become seri- 
ously diverted from the Bust. 

" The victim of his virtues, he was placed 
in what is invariably known as domicilio 
coatto (confinement) on a sea-bound island. 
There, loaded with chains, and guarded day 
and night by heavy dragoons with drawn 
sabres, he ultimately perished. That man 
was your father! " 

Athena's palette fell from her nerveless 
grasp. 

" I now turn on the gas, and both the 
dead and the dead-alive will appear. The 
scene before you represents Trafalgar 
Square. Victorious troops from Egypt are 
marching by. They have just detrained at 
Charing Cross. I suppose they must have 



76 Borrowed Plumes 

come overland as far as Calais or Boulogne. 
You will notice the Exiled Philanthropist 
with a bright little girl and a handsome 
Greek boy, the latter holding a stuffed squir- 
rel on wheels by a string." 

A sudden tremor passed through Athena's 
limbs. It shook her easel, displacing the 
Bust, which fell nose-downwards with a 
thud to the floor. Where it fell, there it 
stuck. 

" The Philanthropist addresses the boy. 
' Daniel Leonidas,' he says, ' listen to the 
band ! ' The drums and fifes are passing ; 
they are playing The Girl I left behind me! 
The little maid is speaking to the Philan- 
thropist. ' Papa,' she asks, * is dey playing 
Kin gum tiimf ' " 

Athena's knees were going under her. 
She sank down uneasily on the moist clay of 
the prostrate chef d'ceuvre, 

'' I never rightly understood," continued 
Dotti, " why she could manage the guttural 
in the word Kingdom, and yet failed to pro- 
nounce it in the word come. But let that 
pass. Now the gentleman hails a four- 
wheeler. * Soho ! ' he cries. ^ What ho ! ' 



Mr. Hall Caine ^^ 

answers the cabman. ' So-\vo ! ' replies the 
Exile with grave courtesy." 

Athena could bear no more. " But sure- 
ly/' she cried, '* my father never made a 
joke?" 

'' Not consciously," replied Dotti. " I 
learned much from him in that respect. I 
owe him a great debt." 

" But who is the little Leonidas in the 
picture? " 

''Ego idios (I myself)! Dotti is an 
alias f' 

" Never mind, dear," cried Athena. " To 
me, whatever your real name, you will never 
be anything but dotty ! " She smiled shyly 
at her own wit, and flung herself upon his 
answering chest. 

* * * * 

Dearest Husband, — For are we not man 
and wife in all except actual fact? — Ever 
since you left me at the church-door at 4 
A.M. this morning in a red wig and top- 
boots, so as to elude the cordon of detectives, 
I have been wondering what you had for 
breakfast. I say to myself, " Why does he 
hold such perilous opinions?" And then I 



yS Borrowed Plumes 

remember that I have promised to be your 
true little help-meet. 

All the police are asking one another 
"Have you seen Honorable Dotti?" The 
crowds are restive and want to go home. 
Throughout the night the troops were raking 
them with shot and shell; but the list of 
casualties is smaller than we anticipated. 
One milch-goat from the Stadion killed by a 
15-pounder, and a Member of the Boule 
(Parliament) bitten by a stray dog in the 
Street of Victory. 

Your loving Athena. 
* * * * 

My Dear Daniel Dotti, — Of course it 
is splendid having love-letter after love-letter 
from you, full of such beautiful language 
about the Republic of Man, and telling me 
how you have got the greater part of Europe 
to agree with you. But I was a little jealous 
of the Parisian ladies. I feel happier now 
you are in Berlin. I have had all your 
placards put up ; and, as you must have fore- 
seen, am soon going to prison for it. I am 
dying to have you back ; but still, don't you 
think that Athens may be a little warm for 



Mr. Hall Caine 79 

you ? You see, it is only quite a short time 
since you left, and some of the detectives 
remember names and faces so curiously well. 
Or, are you coming back in the red wig and 
a new nom de guerre ? I feel so excited. 
Your faithful little Wife. 



" Dearest," said Athena, as she lay limply 
in Dotti's arms, " I am so glad that I lived 
long enough- to see your hour of triumph, 
and share your joy at the Abolition of Hier- 
archies. How our poor human methods are 
but as clay or plasticene in the hands of a 
Higher Destiny ! You hoped to attain your 
end by peaceful means. I dare not think 
how long this might have taken. But now 
you have succeeded in a moment by the 
simple murder of a Prime Minister — no, 
no, dearest. I know it was only manslaugh- 
ter " 

" Athena ! " cried Dotti, hoarsely, *' do 
not mention it. Have I not abjured the 
guerdon of that — of that regrettable inci- 
dent ? Elected this day to the Presidency of 
the New Republic, my motto is still Every- 



8o Borrowed Plumes 

thing for Everybody else. As usual, I efface 
myself.'' 

Epilogue. 

It was a summer evening. Kaspari's work 
was done. Beside his cottage door, on the 
hills above Megara, the fine old shepherd 
was sitting in the sun. He had just returned 
from Athens, after a one-day excursion. 

"Papous! (grandpapa)," cried little 
Petrokinos, " what is that you have in your 
pocket, so large and smooth and round? " 

" My child," replied Kaspari, " 'tis a 
present from Athens for a good boy. 'Tis a 
bit of the Bust of the great Dotti ! " 

With that he drew forth a cast of the 
lately-discovered fragment of a portrait head 
which that day had been set up, to the 
accompaniment of the massed bands of all 
available Brotherhoods, on the tomb of 
Athena in the Potters' Quarter (Keramei- 
kos). 

" Who was Dotti, grandpapa ? " 

" Dotti, my boy ? why that's ages ago, 
back in the early part of the twentieth cen- 
tury, before they did away with Kings and 



Mr. Hall Caine 8i 

Boundaries, and such-like relics of bar- 
barism." 

" Is it a pretty story, grandpapa ? '' asked 
the boy wistfully. 

" That's a matter of taste, my child," 
replied the old man; *' but I know it's a 
d d long one." 



VI. 

MISS MARIE CORELLI. 

[Choice Sayings.] 

Surely there is Something, if we could 
but find out what it is. O unfathomable 

deeps ! 

* * * * 

Each of our actions, however seemingly 
trivial, is a link in the chain of moral and 
physical evolution. Try to rise from your 
bed without having first lain down, and you 
will discover, all too late, how indispensable 
is the value of the missing link. 

* * * * 
Methinks that we whom the gods hold 

dear are not the last to die. And what, 
indeed, were their immortal existence if reft 
of love? 'Twere as a Hamlet-phy without 
the essential pervading Spirit. 

'F T* ^ 'P 

$2 



Miss Marie Corelli 83 

Man glories in titles. A woman is con- 
tent with Genius. 

* * * * 
What is this tiny terrestrial ball as com- 
pared with the vast invisible Universe? It 
is a mote, a bubble, a gnat in the Great 
Inane. 

* * * * 
Oggi! Oggl! cry the ice-cream wayfarers 

from far Campanian hills. To-day! To- 
day ! How true ! There is no time precisely 
like the present. The past is over ; the future 
yet to be. 

«|C 3|C )|C ^ 

It is the curse of existence that we are 
compelled to keep silence. The heart's blood 
pulses, yet we must hide it from the crowd. 
So great is the numbing, stifling influence of 
convention. How seldom can we be our- 
selves ! 

* 5fs * * 

What is the Good? And what is the 
Beautiful ? Who can say ? All we know is 
that both terms are synonymous, the one 
quite as much as the other. 

Jjs * * * 



84 Borrowed Plumes 

Science is but the confession of man's 
ignorance. Art, with a few exceptions, is 
the effort of woman, everywhere clogged 
and thwarted, to express herself. 

jjt H« * * 

The mighty Ocean may run dry in the 
far-off to-be ; but the welling tears of Beelze- 
bub flow on for ever. 

T* ^ ^ -K 

If we could only understand all mysteries, 
then the Ultimate Cause would become plain 
to the intelligence of the meanest critic. 

* 5H * Hs 

We are as swimmers, cast upon the 
dilemma-horns of two swift currents. Each 
stroke for the True bears us upward and 
onward ; each surmounted rung of the ladder 
makes the next but easier, especially if we 
bear others with us. 

* * * * 

Is there not in us women an infinite 
capacity for the Transcendent ? Touch that 
slumbering molecule with the right spark, 
and a heavenly flame shoots up, beaconing 
the mariner to port. 

?fC >fC ^ T* 



Miss Marie Corelli 85 

What is it, that ethereal essence which 
permeates our mortal frame to the finger- 
tips, and colours our daily existence as with 
rainbow-hues ? Is it a conundrum ? Go to ! 
Know thyself ! 

'K 'K ^ ^ 

It is not the frank, glaring vulgarity of 
the masses which sets a furrowed frown 
upon the stern forehead of the Thinker. 
Rather it is the enervating Hedonism of the 
epicurean aristocrat, that insidious poison 
which slowly undermines society. A de- 
generate world, my masters ! 

* * * * 
When woman rises to her true stature, 

and shakes off the strangulation-gripe of the 
harem, she is said to be " unsexed." 

* * * * 
What avails it to throw the jewels of 

Genius to a swinish public, when the afore- 
said herd loves best to wallow in an olla- 
podrida of filthy rags ? 

3|C 3^C yf. 3|x 

The age is ennuye. It has grown tired of 
the wise, pure, poetic ideals of Greece and 
Rome. The day-dreams of a Sapho or a 



86 Borrowed Plumes 

Juvenal are accounted less piquant than the 
ugly facts of an Old Kent Road. Who was 
it that said, O Tempora ? and, again, O 
Mores? 

* * * * 
Nous avons soif! It is the cry of human- 
ity peering into the unsearchable wells of 
Truth. '' Who, who," it asks, like the 
Danaids of yore, ^' has put a rift within the 
bucket? We would drink! Nous avons 
soif!" 

* * * 5^ 

What is criticism ? It is the earth-serpent 
Jealousy, that goes upon its belly, leaving a 
slimy trail upon the springing Tree of 
Knowledge to which it may never hope to 
climb. 

* * * * 
What a terrible gift is this of unerring 

insight 1 To read Sham at a glance: to dive 
beneath the white-wash of Superficiality : to 
recognise, as the outside critic never can, 
the limits of one's own creations; all this Is 
to feel the exquisite torture of an archangel 
temporarily confined in an earthly pig-sty. 



Miss Marie Corelli 87 

Noel! What thoughts, what emotions the 
Httle word awakes! It is the French for 
Christmas ! 

* * * * 
Listen, I say, to the pure, sw eet, passionate 

idylls of the birds! Is there not a tacit 
reproach in the lyric of the lark? Does not 
the p3ean of the bull-finch make you blush? 
They do not throttle one another in a sordid 
struggle on the Stock Exchange ; or mar the 
beauty of creation with petty theories of 
Science, so-called. 

* * * * 

You ask me why I am so modest. No 
great Artist regards her work as her own. 
She is but the inspired medium. And when 
her labour attains fruition it passes from her 
possession and becomes the heritage of all 
time. She may admire it with whole heart ; 
but only as one of the crowd, the unnum- 
bered atoms of humanity. 

3ji *!* ^ 'T' 

A dog has more honesty and good faith 
than a man. That is why we pay an annual 
penalty for keeping dogs. Yet you may 
shelter a man-tyrant under your roof, and 



88 Borrowed Plumes 

pay nothing for the privilege, except in hot, 
indignant tears, wrung from you by vile 
oppression and the viler counterfeit of love. 

*jl >jC ^ 5jJ 

The year, not less than the month, the 
w^eek, the day, must eventually pass and be 
no more. The Temporal can never outlive 
the Eternal. 



VII. 

MR. DOOLEY. 

[Period: August, 1900.] 

" I HEAR-R they'se a gr-reat chanst iv a 
Gin'ral Diss'lution if th' weath'r on'y kapes 
on," says tli' Sicrety iv th' Lib'ral Cork's, in 
conf rence with th' Cla-ark iv th' Meech'- 
rollogy Departmint. " They was a platf'm 
onst again th' war-r, but' tis broke," says he, 
'' an' th' Lib'ral Parthy's f'r paintin' itsilf 
thrue kha-arky. Ivery candydate's got t' be 
a sojer or a sailor or a war-r cor-r'spondhunt 
or ilse a horsp't'l ordherly," says he. Cap. 
Lambd'h'n's r-runnin' f'r Newcastle on th' 
Dimmycratic tick't; an' th' champeen fead- 
hen Pole '11 swape th' boord at Hyde Park 
Cor-rner, th' hotbed iv th' ray-acshun'ry 
il'ment," says he ; " onless he fiirrst asclnds 
to th' House iv Payrs," says he. " Th' ole 
counthry '11 be recrooted fr'm th' Mull'gan 
89 



90 Borrowed Plumes 

Gyards, an' th' iliction expinses paid be a 
sprinklin' iv pathrites fr'm th' Ph'lippeens. 
'Tis pity th't th' wan Lib'ral Mimber at th' 
Front 's pr'vinted fr'm attindin' be th' call iv 
jooty," says he. '* I dinnav/ what '11 be th' 
price iv a loan iv a Lion's Skin or a Rid 
Insign, but they'se a tur-rble sthrain on th' 
ma-ark't alriddy, an' th' German houses 
onable t' ex' cute fur-rther ordhers f'r th' 
prisint," says he. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

" An' what '11 be th' name iv ye'er new 
wather-choobe boilers?" says th' Pos'- 
masth'r-Gin'ral. 

*'Bellvill/' says th' Fur-rst Lord iv th' 
Adm'r-lty. 

" An' a fine proshpect f'r th' public," says 
Lond'ndherry, '' if they'se annything in a 
name," says he. 

" An' what might be th' addhriss iv ye'er 
new sorthin' off'ce," says Mr. Goosh'n. 

" Mount Plisant," says Lond'ndherry. 

*' 'Tis another fine proshpect f'r th' pub- 
lic," says Mr. Goosh'n. 

>K >i« * * 

" I'll not have conscr-ription," says th' 



Mr. Dooley 91 

Undher Sicrety iv War-r. " 'Tis a free 
counthry," says he, " an' not wan iv thim 
slave-dhrivin' European monno-polies," says 
he. '* It 's mesilf th't 's all f'r kindness an' 
th' Volunth'ry systh'm," he says. " They'se 
a power iv good Threes' ry goold been 
squandhered on th' Orxill'ry For-rces, an' 
they done splendid," says he. " But it's 
mighty onconvanient f'r th' Sthrateejans not 
t' know what la-ads they have t' dipind upon 
t' fight f'r th' flag again th' naygers," says 
he, " whin th' squaze comes all iv a suddint," 
says he. " I'd have voluntheerin' made 
com-puls'ry, same 's th' Rig'lars; so's ye 
may know whar y' ar-re," says he. '' It'd be 
conthrairy t' th' undherlyin' princ'ples iv 
th' sarv'ce," says Mr. Arn'l' Forsth'r. *' An' 
a sop t' Cerbeerius," says Sorr Hinnery, " t' 
give thim th' chanst t' clane the'er dirthy 
lin'n in privat," says he. " If I'd on'y 
known," says th' Undher Sicrety iv War-r, 
" th't me proposh'l 'd cause offince, I'd 've 
dhropped it b'fore I took it up," says he. 
An' he dhropped it. 

* * * * 

" I'll not intertain th' disthressfull dilly- 



92 Borrowed Plumes 

gates on mass," says th' Chairm'n iv th' 
Gr-reat Easth'n Comp'ny. '' Lave thim come 
be twos an' threes," says he, " an' I'll dish- 
coorse with thim sip' rate," says he. " 'Tis a 
livin' wage they'se shtrikin' for, is it? An' 
how manny times will I till ye th't th' livin' 
wage 's not th' consarn iv th' Comp'ny, nor 
th' gin'ral con-vanience iv the public nay- 
ther," says he; ''it's th' inthrests iv th' 
div'dhends," says he, " same's a Sugar 
Thrust. They'se some 'd have us ray-form 
th' thrack," says he, " an' clane out th' 
ca-ars, an' mop up th' dirt iv Fenchurch St. 
Depot , an' sim'lar couns'ls iv per-fiction. 
What nixt ? " says he. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

" Were ye iver in a sha-am fight 't Alder- 
shot? " says I,t' a Corp'ral iv th' Inn'skilHn's 
fr'm th' front. 

" I was," says he. 

" An' does 't bear anny ray-sim-blance to 
th' field iv ca-arnage?" says I. 

" Savin' thransp't an' th' sunsthroke, it 
does not," says he. 

" Do they dhress y' up f'r it? " says I. 

" In invis'ble rid," says he. 



Mr. Dooley 93 

" An' do they not larn ye to take cover? " 
says I. 

*' ■'Twud be playin' hide-'n-sake on a goluf 
green," says he. 

''An' is they niver an ambushcade ? " 
says I. 

" Divvle a wan," says he, " with both 
parthies knowin' ivery inch iv th' ground be 
hear-rt, an' th' nixt move rig'lated be th' 
Gover'mint rools," says he. 

" Have y' no wurrud iv difinse f r th' 
systh'm? " says I. 

" 'Tis a gr-rand thrainin' f'r bein' kilt," 
says he. '' Thrue f'r ye, they'se not anny 
better matarial th'n th' British inf'nthry be 
rayson iv the-er cour'ge an' dog-headness ; 
but 'tis th' insthruction th't makes thim th' 
finest ta-arg't in th' wurruld," says he. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

" Have ye anny notion iv th' Far-r 
Easth'n question," says O'Leary. 

''I have," says I; ''but 'tis inthr'cate. 
Fur-rst, ye see, they'se th' Boxers. Thim 's 
pathrites," says I, " same's th' Moon- 
Hghthers; an' be that token th' Chiny Gov- 
er'mint 's again thim, and thrates thim 's 



94 Borrowed Plumes 

in'mies. But they'se both again th' furrin 
divvies, an' 'tis why th' Chiny Gover'mint 
thrates thim 's frinds. An' th' 'Hed Powers 
're frinds with th' Chiny Gover'mint whin it 
's again th' pathrites; an' in'mies whin it 's 
not again thim; an' 'twud shoot th' Powers 
fine t' be frinds again th' common in'my," 
says I, " if on'y they wasn't nath'ral-bor-rn 
in'mies iv wan another fr'm th' commince- 
mint," says I. '' Ye follow me argyments? " 
says I. 

*' I do," says he; ''an' the poor down- 
throdden crayther has me thrue symp'thy." 

"Who's that?" says I. 

*' Th' Sult'n, iv coorse," says he. 



VIII. 
MR. HENRY HARLAND. 

[The Car dinar s Snuff-box.] 

For the garden of a chalet, picked up on 
the word of a baihff's advertisement, with 
never an asterisk in Baedeker to guarantee 
the Aussicht, it was not so bad a spot to 
drink beer in under a July sun, very aperitive 
to the pores. 

At Peter's feet swept the Rhine in a 
swirling rush of molten lead, gathering 
speed, compressing its flanks, for the rapids 
below Lauffenburg. Across the river, be- 
yond the feathery slopes of the castle- 
grounds, the forest uplands of Baden 
stretched, ridge above ridge of pine, oak, 
larch, northwards to the bastioned heights of 
Menzenschwand, vague, symbolic, impal- 
pable on the horizon's verge. 

A schoolboy memory of the Muse beat 
95 



96 Borrowed Plumes 

importunate on his brain. " Positively," he 
thought, '' what with the river, the lawns, 
the pines, and a fair substitute for topmost 
Gargarus, the scene might be sitting for a 
photogravure illustration of (Enone. Not, of 
course, a perfect analogy. Thus, the Rhine 
at this stage is somewhat bulky for the exer- 
cise of * falling through the clov'n ravine in 
cataract after cataract ' " 

But he had only got as far as the second 
cataract, when — " You find the view a touch 
too chromographic?" The voice was female, 
but of a fine distinction, of a full, rich, 
contralto resonance, to rival the roar of the 
intervening flood. 

Involuntarily Peter rose and bowed to the 
opposite bank.- A lovely phantom met his 
glance, clear-cut, crisp-edged, dazzling white 
against the peacock-green of her environ- 
ment. For a brief minute, crowded with 
dim recognition, incredulity, triumphant 
assurance, Peter was beside himself, and 
neither of him could find an answer to the 
lady's preamble. Oh, but with good excuse, 
for was not this her first word with Peter? 
Thus far, he had only seen her in public at 



Mr. Henry Harland 97 

varying distances, had had no speech of her, 
had just surmised her enough to make her 
the heroine of his novel. 

" You find it somewhat arranged, crude, 
obvious ? " she asked in Enghsh ; oh, yes, in 
quite good Enghsh. 

" On the contrary, I had pronounced it a 
Tennysonian harmony." Peter spoke with 
an outward aplomb; but his heart was 
beating just anywhere between his boots and 
his Homburg hat. 

" Ah, yes," she said, " you allude to 
(Enone. An admirable classic." Her man- 
ner, as if inured to dialectic, might have 
confessed her a Girtonian, but for a some- 
thing, an I-know-not-what of banter in her 
left eyelid, scarce perceptible across the 
estranging river. 

" I admit the analogy to be imperfect," 
replied Peter. 

" By the way," she said, " I hope that the 
chalet answers fairly to the terms of my 
advertisement; that you don't think the 
photographs were cooked." Again, the slight 
depression of the azure-veined left lid. Then, 
with a valedictory bow and in the easiest 
7 



98 Borrowed Plumes 

possible manner — '' Please let me know if 
the drains go wrong. Good evening." 

" An adorable creature," he reflected, as 
the crisp-edged vision of whiteness vanished 
up the lawns. " What a nerve, what intui- 
tion, what femininity! " 



" Will the High-born have yet another 
beer?" It was the Swiss maid, waisted like 
a young cedar, stolidly flamboyant in her 
local finery. 

" Gretchen," answered Peter abstractedly 
in English, " to cite the words of our late 
immortal laureate, on whom we have already 
touched allusively, ' the truth, that flies the 
flowing can, will haunt the vacant cup.' At 
present I shrink from truth; I would soar 
on the pinions of Daedalean presumption. 
You do not chance to keep any hashish on 
the premises? " 

" Biiie, mein Herrf " 

" Ja zvohl, noch ein Glas Bier. And, 
Gretchen," he continued in the vernacular, 
" tell me who lives opposite." 



Mr. Henry Harland 99 

" The noblest Sir does not know ? It is 
Her Serene Widowhood, the Herzogin von 
Basel-Basel." 

''Her Widowhood!" murmured Peter, 
greatly relieved. 

" Her Serene Widowhood," Gretchen cor- 
rected. 

" Implying a superiority to the need of 
consolation?" asked Peter. 

" Bitter " 

" Yes, yes, more beer, Gretchen ; do not 
hesitate to bring me more beer." 



Ten days later Peter sat in the garden 
trying vainly to make copy out of his 
despair. Behind him swept the Rhine in a 
swirling rush of molten lead, gathering 
speed, compressing its flanks, for the nar- 
rows below the village. An agitated dachs- 
hund was tracking water-vermin with 
plaintive whines. 

'' Is the dog attached to you ? " The voice 
was female, but of a fine distinction, of a 
rich, ripe, contralto resonance, transilient 
across the roar of the river. 



loo Borrowed Plumes 

Peter started to his feet. His heart was 
still volatile; but this time he was more 
prepared, composed, alert. " In the absence 
of other diversions, he consents to be aware 
of my propinquity," he replied. " But for 
the moment he is preying upon his fellow- 
brute." 

" An illustration of the universal law of 
Nature? " she asked, with an air of serious 
detachment. But there was a something, an 
I-really-hardly-know-what of badinage in 
her smile. 

" So careful of the type, so careless of the 
single life," replied Peter. Loverlike, he 
was eager to improve the occasion, to expand 
himself in the profundities of dogma. 

" Have you observed," he continued, 
" that in this incessant war of pursuer and 
pursued, the nobler the nature of the animal 
the greater the modification he undergoes by 
his ignoble employ ? The rat himself pursues 
a yet inferior class of vermin, and in the 
process becomes but negligibly deformed. 
The dachshund, on the other hand, degener- 
ates into a mere abortion, a caricature of a 
dog. Is not here a premonitory warning for 



Mr. Henry Harland loi 

the highest form of Nature — I refer to 
Humanity? " 

'' Oh," she said, " you are much, much too 
clever for me. But I am nothing if not a 
child of Nature; so I shall harden my heart 
and go on ' still achieving, still pursuing/ 
Some people like being pursued, is it not 
so? " And on the word she had withdrawn 
before Peter's density could compose a perti- 
nent retort. 

" What a nerve," he mused, '' what intui- 
tion, what Weihlichkeit!" 



The first touch of autumn was on the 
valley, as Peter crossed the castle-lawns to 
take his last leave of the Herzogin. Her 
creed he might have contrived to adopt, but 
there was no getting over this eternal offence 
of her title and her wealth. The lady was 
above him and away. It was the old tale of 
Queen Kate of Cornaro and the page-boy, 
that " pined for the grace of her so far above 
his power of doing good to." 

As for the view, its general features were 



I02 Borrowed Plumes 

practically unchanged. Beyond the feathery 
slopes of the castle-grounds the great forest 
uplands of Baden stretched, ridge above 
ridge of pine, larch, oak, northwards to the 
bastioned heights, &c. 

A schoolboy memory of the Muse beat 
importunate upon his brain. " Positively," 
he thought, " w^hat with the river, the lawns, 
the pines, and the best of substitutes for top- 
most Gargarus " (repeat, as above, down to 
the words, ''cataract after cataract") 

But he had only got as far as the second 

'' cataract," when *' You find the view 

a touch too chromographic ? " 

Peter started and bowed to a gracious 
phantom of whiteness, crisp-cut, clean- 
edged, on a rustic seat. His heart was 
beating just anywhere between his boots and 
his Homburg hat. Oh, but with good 
excuse, for Peter was in love, but very very 
much in love. 

*' You find it somewhat arranged, crude, 
obvious? " she asked. 

'' On the contrary I had pronounced it a 
Tennysonian harmony." 

'' Ah, yes," she said, " you allude to 



Mr. Henry Harland 103 

CEJnone. An admirable classic." Her man- 
ner, as if inured to dialectic, might have 
confessed her a Girtonian. But there was a 
something, &c. 

" I admit the analogy to be imperfect," 
replied Peter. 

" Your dog is still attached to you ? " She 
pointed with quick spontaneity to the 
agitated dachshund pursuing imaginary 
game in the shrubbery. 

" In the absence of other diversions, yes. 
But for the moment he preys upon his 
fellow-brute." 

'' An illustration of the universal law of 
Nature? No, please," she added, as Peter 
was in act to take up his cue; " I cannot bear 
any more of it. Let us try a new conversa- 
tion. What are you carrying there? " 

" I am restoring to the Bishop his latch- 
key. He dropped it," said Peter, sheepishly. 

" Not again! " she said; " how unoriginal 
of him! By-the-by, is your new novel fin- 
ished?" 

*' My new novel ! " he cried, aghast. 
" Who told you that I write novels ? " 

" But you must have known that I knew* 



I04 Borrowed Plumes 

No author ever hid his profession under a 
bushel for a week together. And, being an 
author on a holiday, you would never think 
of missing such a chance of copy. What are 
you going to call this account of your latest 
experiences? " 

"I am calling it The Bishop's Latchkey,'' 
said Peter, without conviction. *' It sounds 
so alluring. That's why I keep carrying the 
thing about. I have to drag it into the 
picture somehow." 

" I think, out of courtesy, you might give 
up that title, and call the book after me. I 
must be more important than the latch-key. 
But I'm afraid the Indiscretion of the 
Duchess has been used already." There was 
a something in her manner — could it have 
been the very least little depression of the 
azure-veined left lid? — that suddenly em- 
boldened Peter. For the time being she lent 
him her eyes, to see things by as she saw 
them. 

" Certainly," he replied; " I will drop my 
title and take your name instead, on the 
understanding that you, for your part " 

" That I, for my part, drop my title and 



Mr. Henry Harland 105 

take your name instead ? " she asked, with a 
very pleasant frankness. 

'' Precisely," he said. 

'■' Oh, very well," said she. 



IX. 

MR. MAURICE HEWLETT. 

Now to the lieges of his Suzerain Lady 
came challenge of tourney from Oom of the 
Doppers, Lord of Outrevalles. And Rouge- 
garde the trobador smote on his tambour and 
made a Chanson des Pauvres Diables Dis- 
traictz. And the lists were straightly set in 
Val de Long-Tomps. And the hollow plain 
was ribbed with naked rocks, grey kopjes 
crowning all. And from the borders of Our 
Lady of the Snows, and from Isles of the 
Southern Cross, flew winged proffers of 
vassal service, and the cry of knighthood 
calling to saddle and spur. And it was really 
rather curious. For My Lord Red-Tape, out 
of his great knowledge of warlike matters, 
made retort courteous, saying, " Oy deus! 
what should we with horse? Send us foot ! " 

But by force of whelming numbers and a 

stubborn hardihood begot of British beef, 
1 06 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett 107 

they overbore no few of the chivalry of 
Oom; and some they made captive before 
ever they could mount and invite the hills to 
cover them. Thereupon a remnant of Eng- 
land's knighthood, composite of the heavy 
sort and such as go in housings of blue (for 
a sprinkling of actual horsemen had joined 
issue with the foe in the melee), made their 
ways homeward. And Le Sieur Bobs de 
Kandahar, holding that the tourney was 
accomplished, himself took ship whence he 
came. At this the heathen, emerging from 
their parole or other sanctuary, rallied for 
the onset; and they swept the lists like an 
Egypt's plague of locusts. And about the 
time of the seventeenth moon (shaped sickle- 
wise for sign of a bloody aftermath) the new 
Lord Red-Tape (for the former had been 
lifted nigher the throne as one that had the 
French speech most nimble on his tongue) 
woke from a drugged sleep on a cry of 
danger, calling '' To horse ! A crown a day, 

and d n the expense ! " So, the traverse 

being a windy matter at this season, there 
was mounting in red haste against the 
second anniversary of the tourney. 



io8 Borrowed Plumes 

But about this time Sir Howard, Lord 
Duke of the North-folk, that hitherto had 
been disposed to cloistral habitudes, sat 
mightily in the public eye. For being Chief 
Butler of England (by grace of birth) and 
also Comptroller of Letter-bags (by grace of 
sheer desert) he was minded to yield up this 
last dignity, the better to expedite him for 
battle against the heathen; of so galliard a 
stock of chivalers was his tree compact. So 
in harness of the wan leopard's hue he sailed 
south by east. And under a blistering noon, 
very noxious to parched maws, he pricking 
against the enemy (that had no heart to wait 
his advent), and crying " Ha! Maltravers! 
Sauve Arundel ! " his palfrey avoided from 
under him. But being recovered of this hurt, 
he made dedication of his knightly spurs to 
Saint Michael of Table Bay, and so home 
without more ado. 

And now you shall hear how he must 
needs make his peace with Monsignor the 
Pope, that had looked askance on this 
crusade and withheld blessing from my Lord 
Duke's emprise. So in palmer's sable he 
made haste to Rome with a great following 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett 109 

of pelegrins, and there he gat himself mis- 
Hked as one that was loud to have His 
Holiness restored to temporal thrones; and 
brought the Quirinal about his ears; and so 
home again, protesting fair intent. 

And as soon as he had done off his 
pilgrim's weeds he must go accoutred 
cap-d-pie in his panoply of Earl Marshal 
(likewise by grace of birth) for proclaiming 
of the new King. And not a blazoned 
herald of them all that could move without 
his nod. And it was matter for mere marvel 
how one mortal could be so innumerably 
gifted. But thereafter he gat him much new 
lore of antic precedence against the King's 
crowning. 

* 5k * * 

Now so it was that the chivalry of Eng- 
land, they alone, took shame of being seen 
abroad in fighting-gear, whether as being too 
proud to air the ensigns of their pride, or for 
modesty, lest in so salient a flame the hearts 
of ladies errant might be as night-moths 
scorched against their will — I may conjec- 
ture, not determine. But Le Sieur Bobs de 
Kandahar sent word that he would have his 



1 1 o Borrowed Plumes 

knighthood eschew mufti (an unchristian 
word, filched, as you should know, from 
unblooded law-givers of Byzant) and come 
before him in armour point-devise. And 
this was but as a tucket to prelude the shock 
of battle. For my Lord Bobs had laid his 
baton in rest against the Empery of Red 
Tape. And it was no madrigal business ; but 
a task such as had Duke Hercles of pleasant 
renown when he laid his besom about the 
middens of the old Man of the Stables 
( Vetus de Stabidis) . 

* * * * 

But scarce it wanted a se'nnight to the 
eve of Monsire Valentine when the arriere- 
ban outflew for summons to a serry of 
knights at the High Court of Parliament. 
And of those that sent it forth Sir Belchamp 
Portedrapeau was one; he that was named 
Fore-and-Aft by his own; for that he sat 
with portions of him overlapping the fence, 
this way and that way. 

'' Saint Lloyd-George for Little Eng- 
land ! " came answer from the Welsh 
Marshes. 

And " Dame ! " cried Jehan of Montrose, 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett 1 1 1 

that, save under great provoking, used but 
sparsely the language of piety ; " and must 
I quit my inkhorn for yon chattering parrot- 
house? " 

" Stone of Rufus ! " cried Sir Vernon de 
Chastel-la-Forest, surnamed Le Pompous 
for a touch of the mammoth in his motion ; a 
born trampler of men ; " Stone of Rufus ! " 
says he, " but I scent budget-work afoot ! " 
And so snorted joyfully. 

" Great Glamis ! " said the Thane of Fife 
(E. Division), " I am the Empire's, let her 
make v^hat wars she will. That first; then 
give me Holy Church to harry ! " 

"King's man!" cried Sir Cop-la-Poule ; 
" and sib with you there, both ways ! " 

But '' By the Mace ! " said La Bouchere of 
the Cordonniers, " there should be noses 
broke among the faithful. 'Tis like to be a 
most amazing pretty medley." 



Now, as the city waxed monstrous fruit- 
ful, but the highways abode as they were, 
save for yawning breaches in the floor 
thereof very unseasonable, you will collect 



1 1 2 Borrowed Plumes 

that the press of passengers, horse and foot, 
grew Hke to a hustle of pilchards pell-mell in 
a Brittany drag-net. And the town-watch 
gave admonishment, crying " Passavant ! 
passavant ! " or " Halte-la ! " as the case 
demanded. And the driver of the all-folks- 
wain would turn to his rearguard and "Lord 
Mayor ha' mercy," he would say, "'tis a 
mazy faring!" And, "Ay, mate, a bit 
thick ! " his fellow ; and so would troll a 
snatch of Adhcesi pavimento. 

But for relief of the pent roads there was 
devised a hollow mine-way, such as coneys 
affect; and engines, fitted thereto, to draw 
men through the midriff of earth, betwixt 
its crust and fiery omphalode. And it was 
named Le Tube a Deux Deniers; for, fared 
they never so far, serf or margrave, differ- 
ence of price or person was there none. But 
against the Company of Adventurers that 
wrought the same was plaint made of flack- 
ing walls, and a volleying of roof-beams, and 
basements rent as with a mangonel. And 
"Tush!" says the Company. But, " Oy, 
sires ! " cried the dwellers overhead, " let the 
chose be ' jugee!''* And so haled them 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett 1 1 3 

before the Shire-reeve's Court, for mulct 
and amercement. 

^ * * * 

Now at the very sable of fog-tide you 
must understand that they play Moralities on 
the dun banks of Thames. And of such are 
the moving histories of Sir Richard de Whit- 
tingtoiine, La Belle Dormeuse, Damosel 
Rouge-Cape, The Forest Infants, Mistress 
Cendrillon (called Cinderella of the Fur 
Slipper, though certain lack-lores would 
have her shod not in vair, which is to say 
fur, but verre, namely glass), Jacques Mort- 
au-Geant and Aladdin of the Lamp Merveil- 
lous (out of Araby). Follows a sample or 
so in this kind : — 

(i) Whether it was the red wine, or the 
splitting of crackers, or else her cinder-hot 
beauty, I know not, that set the Prince's 
heart on sudden fire. Certes, he caught her 
to his knee in the eyes of all the gaping 
meinie. 

" Vair-slipper," he cried, " your little foot 
is on my neck; your slave am I already. 
Make me your Prince ! " 

" Lord, say not that," said Mistress Cen- 
8 



1 1 4 Borrowed Plumes 

drillon. Ashen were her cheeks against the 
blue flame of her hair. Twice round her 
brows it went, and the pigtail's ending slept 
between her breasts. '' Lord," says she, " it 
can never be. The humming-bird may not 
mate with the titmouse." 

" By my halidom," he cried, '' but it shall 
be so, ma mye." 

" Lord ! " she murmured, " the hour is 
close on middle night; let me away! " 

She slipped like green water from his 
rocky arms. " Nay, popinjay," he cried, " it 
is the hour of Philomel. Stay with me till 
she withdraw before the early throstle." 

For all answer, light as a beam of Dian 
she slid down the bannisters and so past the 
drowsy cloak-room sentinels. Midnight 
carillon, pealing from a hundred belfries, 
snapped the wand of faerie. Into the sheer 
starlight flitted the shadow of a homing 
wench, clad in most pitiful poor gear. My 
Lord Prince, hot in pursuit, stood rooted to 
earth, chanting a forlorn stave of Le Tresor 
des Humbles. Against the nap of his sap- 
phire vest he held a Slipper of Vair chance- 
dropped in the princely purlieus. 



Mr. Maurice Hewlett 1 1 5 

(ii) Young Spring was waking in the 
high woods. Now was the pairing-time of 
amorous fowls in burgeoned brakes. Earth 
turned in her sleep with a throb of surging 
sap. Lush hyacinths spread a gossamer 
web to veil her bridals. Hand in hand, as 
became orphans of one ravaged house, the 
Forest Infants paced under boon boughs. 

*' Parbleu," said Fulk, that was right heir 
of this goodly demesne, " but I have an 
aching maw ! " 

" And I," said his sister Alys, " I also 
could do with a devilled ortolan." 

" 'Tis a dog of an uncle ! " said Fulk, with 
a round oath that your Gascon trooper might 
repeat, not I. 

*' And the aunt a vile ferret," replied Alys, 
and wept for mere emptiness. 

'' Mort de ma mere," cried Fulk, "'tis ill 
work ambling thus. Let us lie close in the 
quick undergrowth, and woo dreams of 
potted lobster, first having shriven our dusty 
souls." 

And so they found them after a many 
days, stark, each in the other's gripe. And 



ii6 Borrowed Plumes 

their pall was wrought of the dead leaves of 
yesteryear. The robins had done it. The 
red of their breasts was, I take it, the pas- 
sionate heart's blood that showed through. 



X. 

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH. 

In the vestibule of Adolescence, the Boy 
stands at plastic pause, clay-soft to the im- 
posed Idea. This is the Propagandist's 
hour ; then, or never, the Vegetarian has his 
chance. 

3jx 3jC 5fC 3p 

A woman more nosingly fastidious of 
essentials, you might waste a season of 
Church Parades and never come up with. 
Yet she married her husband for his gift of 
digesting Welsh Rabbit. 

* Hi * * 

Her versatile nature swung in a dazzling 
orbit of aptitudes. Intrepid horsewoman, 
with an edged wit for dialectics, she could 
also sit the downy of postprandial arm- 
chairs with a firmness to wonder at, smiling 
a focussed attention on bovine inanity. 

* * * * 

117 



1 1 8 Borrowed Plumes 

Present, you could swear to her for a 
glowingly constant; absent, she wrote '' Will 
wire," and telegraphed " Will write " — to 
the chilling of assurance. 

^ * :|j J|S 

A next-weeker for procrastination, there 
was ^acus in his eye for the delays of 
others. Chatham-and-Dover with himself, 
he was Time-and-Tide for the rest. 

* * * * 
Poetry and the affiHated indiscretions had 

always been viewed by the Family with pro- 
found distrust. To the Head, not incurious 
of the Burgeoning Period, this graft of 
Romance on a stem already shooting 
Rhythmics had hinted at a deranged hered- 
ity. A botany specialist, hastily summoned 
from Leipzig, checked the development at 
nick of the vernal. 

* * * * 
Bachelor by habit and a graceful seat by 

force of application, he had the manner of 
riding straight after hounds or women; but 
tempered by an instinct for country and a 
taste for the durable. He would choose the 
open gate at the fallow's corner, in contempt 



Mr. George Meredith 1 1 9 

of incredulous eye-lifts thrown over shrug 
of shoulders leaning back for the rise, rather 
than risk his stable's best blood over a low 
hedge, flushing young Spring, with heavy 
drop at fourteen stone on macadam flints, 
shrieking menace of a wrung fetlock for the 
ten miles home. In the other kind of chase 
he had cried off on suspicion that the lady's 
mother had died fat. 

* * >i« * 

" No Veuve like the Old Veuve," he cried 
across the opal iridescence, bubbles wink- 
ingly discursive at brim ; and was resiliently 
instant to retrieve the solecism, like the con- 
noisseur he was of Bacchus and the femi- 
nine. Was not this indeed the fair widow's 
first excursus into Epicuria since her 
husband's lapse to the underworld? 

" Onions is off," the waiter interposed, 
with sharp recall by Phaethon-descent from 
ether to earth. She blushed a tempered rubi- 
cund. Should he retrospect for its meaning 
to the Veuve-solecism? Or did "onions" 
stand with her for an artificial excitative of 
the lachrymal, proper in tolerated widow- 
hood tending to consolable ? Opposing argu- 



I20 Borrowed Plumes 

ments paced out their duello distance divisive 
of his dear mind; "New widov^s are the 
best " confronted by " The time of tears and 
convention is over." After all, was there so 
great difference? Let them embrace broth- 
erly over boxed pistols to satisfaction of 
honour. 



[Of Lord Mayor's Day.]— Should not 
some poet capturingly perpetuate for us this 
scene, repullulant — a hardy annual — from 
the impenetrable of sublimity? Londinen- 
sian, surely, this progress of Montanus and 
his choir, tardy with turtle-lined abdomen; 
these civic fathers alighting at the Courts of 
Law, tribute of Commerce to claims of 
Justice; symbolic nymphs painted to braver 
than life, conscious of limbs posed at relaxed 
tension on chariots arrested in preposterous 
mid-career ; gaudy within limits of the inex- 
pensive; Gog-Magog, with historic retinue 
varicoloured to admiration, conducting 
tavern interludes at a remove; the whole 
better conceivable in France. 



Mr. George Meredith i 2 1 

[Lines on the publication of Bismarck's 
Love Letters; after The Nuptials of Attila.] 

This is he of the iron throat, 
Bold at beer of Lager blend, 
Stout to swallow, and never wince, 
Twenty quarts or so on end ; 

My Bismarck, O my Bismarck. 
He whose voice, a thunder peal, 
Rang across the squadrons' thud. 
Chirrup of stirrup, clank of steel. 
Sabre on sabre, shock of lance. 
Uhlan's lance on cuirass-plate ; 
Voice of the trumpet-blast of Fate 
Smiting the flanks of Seine in flood. 
Flood of the blood of the flower of France. 

My Bismarck, O my Bismarck. 

Strange to think he lived at home 
In a human sort of way ; 
Never, with his lips afoam, 
Felled the harmless patient cat ; 
Never actually sat 
In a fit of brutal play 
On his heir-apparent's head ; 
Never even pulled his ear ; 

My Bismarck, O my Bismarck. 
Never brained the servant who 
Made for him his daily bed ; 



122 Borrowed Plumes 

Dealt in no domestic crime 
Such as bigamy ; merely wed 
One wife only at a time ! 
Can it be we judged amiss 
Of the Great in Peace and War 
As regards his private sphere ? 
Erred, in fact, in looking for 
Stronger hero's stuff than this, 

My Bismarck, O my Bismarck ? 



It is the same France, implacably woman 
to the eyes of her, dowered for farce-play 
with the eternal mutable. Yesterday con- 
spuitive to the nauseous at mention of Drey- 
fus redivive; swooping in guise of massed 
Amazons of the line, javelins low at thigh- 
rest, on solitary appealing for only Truth 
and Justice with what of voice remained 
from Devil-Isle torture. To-day uproarious 
in fantastic serenade of Liberty under bal- 
cony of discredited tyrant heavy with spoil 
of the unenfranchised, mildly ruminant on 
Ignorance butchered, he away, to make his 
Dutchman's holiday. 

5^ 'T* 'I^ 't^ 

See him there, this Rosebery, supine in 



Mr. George Meredith 123 

phantasy of exile on bed of Neapolitan 
violets, preferred for emollience; Baiae- 
windows open on the infinite of blue dim- 
ming to lift of Sorrento, Ischia hull-down in 
the Occidental; emergent at call of interest- 
ing occasion, rectorial or the like; triple 
bronze to resist allurement of Liberal 
matrons vocal for return of injured hero; a 
Coriolanus de luxe. See him. Lord Ormont 
of the civil, consoling the Misunderstood he 
counts himself to be with disquisitions on the 
Giant in Action, a " last phase " ; reflective, 
not without pathos, of a personal penulti- 
mate, prematurely imminent, with Theban 
Sphinx for riddling exemplar. 

* ^ ^ ^ 

[On Mr. Punch's cartoon of Cronje and the 
Shade of Napoleon at St. Helena.] 
Admire how the Tyrannical in current 
adumbration of Sambourne-pen stands at 
insular remove posed authentic; takes sullen 
salute of co-exile cognisant in vagueness of 
the over-again of Imperial Fact. A picture 
of contrastables confluent to similar; here 
your Dutch, exsurgent from Cincinnatus- 
plough, inexpert of externals transmarine 



I 24 Borrowed Plumes 

and other, territorial within Hmits of the 
fencible; there, your Corsican, cosmic to the 
utter of belhcose, insatiate of a shackled 
hemisphere one link short ; labefact each 
before a like Necessitated, merging extremes. 
^ Ji< H« * 

[Lines on Mr. Chamberlain's return from 
an excursion to the Mediterranean.] 

Bronze-ardent with meridian suns, 

Scent of Italia's flowers about his boots, 

Behold the Ineluctable leap to land ! 

Still salt by briny converse with the fleet, 

A tar in being. Dover's silent guns 

A little irk him, hardened to salutes. 

Behold him stand, 

Brummagem-factured, monocled, aloof, 

Unspoiled of admiration, envy-proof, 

Intolerably self-complete : 

Janus of War to ope or shut at will ; 

An orb of circuinvolvent satellites, 

Portentous past belief ; of good and ill 

Bodeful to measureless of mortal ken ; 

Now off the swung machine a bounding god. 

And now the ditchward guide of blinded men. 

So sees him Europe planted, she, at gaze ; 

Sees him that Britain Greater by his nod. 



Mr. George Meredith 125 

Addressed to undreamed acrobatic flights, 

Bent to negotiate 

The sundering bar of centuries both in blaze ; 

A salamander in asbestos-tights 

Armoured against the igneous of Fate. 

^ ijc ^ J^C 

A strange irruption of brute atavism, this 
gallery clamour of the Hooligan loud to 
extinguish the favourable of stalled Intelli- 
gence; percipient Judgment merged in the 
boo of Premeditation. Not without reason 
was it recorded in the Pilgrim's Scrip : " The 
last thing to be civilised by man is the gods/' 



XI. 

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK 

(Lord Avebury). 

Originality is the mark of genius ; but a 
love of common-place, or " a firm grasp of 
the obvious," may be acquired by the hum- 
blest among us. 

* Hs * * 
Poverty is not necessarily shameful. It 

was once remarked of a great man that " he 
came of poor but honest parents." As Burns 
so beautifully said : '* For a' that and a' 
that!" 

* * * * 
Childhood, both in man and beast, is the 

period of innocence. Of Mary's " little 
lamb " it was said that '' its fleece was 
white as snow." 

* * * * 

How interesting is the present century! 
126 



Sir John Lubbock 127 

A hundred years ago there were fewer 
books. The population has also increased. 

'f^ 5^ ^ >jC 

It is best not to follow two points of the 
compass at the same time. The pilot that 
steers both for Scylla and Charybdis is in 
danger of missing them both (Homer). 

* * * * 

A man's work will often outlive him. 
Thus, Shakspeare and Watt are dead; but 
Hamlet and the steam-engine survive. 

* * ^ * 

It is generally recognised that in great 
danger you may show presence of mind, even 
though you are absent in body. Some of 
our best military criticisms are produced in 
Fleet Street. 

^ >j€ 5jC 5js 

Botany brings us into relationship with 
flowers. Many people consider that the 
study of Nature is best pursued in the open 
air. This view applies also to hunting, 
shooting and fishing. 

3^ ^ ^ ^ 

And then the weather! How much of 
true happiness depends upon conversation, 



128 Borrowed Plumes 

and how much of this on the weather ! Yet 
" there is no such thing as bad weather, only 
different kinds of good weather " (Ruskin). 
This true thought has often helped me in a 
London fog. 

* jjj H« * 

Water is recognised as a necessity to 
ships. What should we do if anything went 
WTong with the ocean? Suppose " the deep 
did rot!" (Coleridge). 

* H« * * 

In Art it is not enough to copy Nature: 
the Ideal should come from wdthin. That 
is why models are so unimportant. There 
was once a great painter who always had 
the hangman to sit for his pictures of Venus. 

>k ^ >!< ;}« 

The power of Music is proverbial. It 
"soothes the savage breast" (Congreve), 
including snakes. It was Cleopatra who 
said, "Give me some music;" on which 
her attendant remarked as follows : " The 
music, ho! " Both these last passages may 
be found in Shakspeare. 



Sir John Lubbock 129 

'' Home, sweet home! " I forget who said 

this. 

* -^ ^ ^ 

It would be difficult to name a single truly 
great poet who has not, at one time or 
another, referred to Love. It is Love that 
gives pinions even to the caterpillar. But 
we must beware of Sirens (Homer.) 

* * * * 

In reading we ought to employ selection. 
It is almost impossible to read every book 
that has been written. Scott's Novels is one 
of the Hundred Best Books. 

* H« 5fs * 

Birds are meant to be our companions. 
There is something very human in the par- 
rot's voice. And how superb is the plumage 
of the peacock ! 

* sjc Hi * 

A Frenchman has said that " to know 
all is to pardon all " (this is the English 
version). It shows that we ought not to 
judge hastily. The story is told of a short- 
sighted person that he once saw in the dis- 
tance what he took to be a man, but when he 
9 



130 Borrowed Plumes 

came closer it turned out to be his own 
brother. 

* JJC 5j! H« 

Virtue is the happy mean (Aristotle). 
Thus, there is the highest authority for mar- 
riage. But with Solomon, and, in a less 
degree, with Henry the Eighth, it degene- 
rated into a habit. 

* ^ ^ ^ 

Friends are a great blessing. Cicero wrote 
an entire essay '^ concerning friendship." 

He 5}C ^ Jj{ 

Who can foretell the Futiire with any 

degree of accuracy? " To be or not to be," 
as Shakspeare said. 

* * * * 

" By that sin fell the angels," was said of 
Ambition. Yet a moderate ambition is com- 
mendable. Every private soldier was at one 
time understood to " carry a Field-Marshal's 
baton in his knapsack," but this is now for- 
bidden in the regulations for field-service. 

3JC ^ ^ 5{C 

Euripides said something cynical about 
riches. Yet many things can be bought with 
money. This is one reason why the posses- 



Sir John Lubbock 131 

sion of wealth adds to the comfort of life. 
*' If thou art rich, thou'rt poor" (Shaks- 
peare) is on the face of it an untruth. 

'K ijC ^ ^ 

Much has been written about the " uses of 
adversity." Let us hope it is true. 
* H« * * 

There is a saying (based upon the Coper- 
nican theory) that Love " makes the world 
go round." It was for Love that Leander 
swam across the Hellespont, which is wider 
than the Serpentine. 

* * * * 
Many people cannot say '* No ! " Others 

early learn to say it when asked to do dis- 
agreeable things. '' Mens sana in corpore 
sano." If the last word is pronounced say 
no, this, taken with my context, is tanta- 
mount to a joke. 

* * * * 
Nature is governed by unvarying laws. 

Every day the sun rises; every evening it 
sets. The only local exception to this last 
rule is the British Empire. 



XII. 
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD. 

Out there on the terrace of the Villa 
Prighi the last of the sunset had ceased to 
illumine the intellectual brow of Hellsmere 
Bannisty. " Modelled by Praxiteles, tinted 
by Botticelli " ; so his head had been de- 
scribed by an artist. Through the well- 
preserved growth that clustered round this 
noble organ he ran his long nervous fingers 
as he pored, with critical rapture, over the 
final proofs of his great opus: — Italian Lib- 
erty: its Cause and Cure. 

Immersed in the splendour of one of 
those scenic descriptions which reflect a con- 
scientious observation in situ — had he not 
rented the Villa Prighi largely for the very 
uses of local colour? — he could still appre- 
ciate the humorous exhalations that stole up 
from the old-world soil of the Campagna 
132 



Mrs. Humphry Ward i 3 3 

through the sentinel Hnes of prophylactic 
eucalyptus. Yet in a general way it was 
not consonant with his detached personality 
to be affected by anything of a strictly 
humorous character. 

Nor would a nature less absorbed in its 
own identity have put so severe a strain on 
the devotion of its audience. But to a type 
like Hellsmere's it did not occur that Euphe- 
mia was laying more surely every minute 
the foundation of an incurable catarrh. It 
only seemed natural that she should want 
to sit shivering in this deadly air for mere 
joy of hearing the following passage for the 
twenty-third time : — 

^' Above me, as I write, stretches the mid- 
summer cobalt of an Italian sky in the full 
sense of that expression. Below, beneath, 
before, behind, to right, to left, lies the vast 
sweep of the Campagna. To have seen 
Rome apart from the Campagna — rich 
though the Eternal City undoubtedly is in 
classical and ecclesiastical traditions, contin- 
uously maintained from the era of Romulus 
and Rhea Silvia down to that of Marie 
Corelli and Hall Caine, not excluding the 



I 34 Borrowed Plumes 

Pontiffs — is to have missed the intrinsic 
force of Italy's association with her own soil. 

^' Here from the terrace of the Villa 
Prighi I look out over avenues of ilex and 
stone-pine, over a wide largesse of rose and 
lilac and cyclamen, and other growths 
whether perennial or appropriate to the sea- 
son, to where, like a phantom balloon, rises 
the airy dome of Peter, and, beyond^ on the 
faint horizon, Soracte stands up and drinks 
the noontide. And everywhere, and always, 
always, always, the Campagna. Hour by 
hour, day by day, week by week, under vary- 
ing conditions of light and weather, I have 
remarked the view from my terrace at Villa 
Prighi; and I can recall no occasion, how- 
ever apparently trivial, when the Campagna 
in some form or other has not met my 
astonished eyes. 

'' But when the dying splendour falls on 
vineyard and ploughland, on broom and 
cytisus and aromatic bean; when waves of 
pellucid amethyst and purple come tumbling- 
out of the wild west, and throw a reflected 
glory on the dazzling gleam of stucco an- 
tiques and sombre lichen-crusted travertine; 



Mrs. Humphry Ward 135 

and the love-lorn nightingale prepares to 
grow eloquent in cypress-bowers; then the 
Campagna is her truest self; then from her 
ghostly soil, a teeming hot-bed of forgotten 
effigies, uprise those effluvia of the shadowy 
past which intoxicate the lizard and other 
native fauna, and to an impressionist, like 
myself, are a most lively source of literary 
inspiration." 

5jC 5fv ^ ^ 

From the Campagna to the moors of Bal- 
liemet ; what a change of milieu! And it was 
characteristic of Hellsmere that his spiritual 
condition always took on something of the 
colour of his physical environment. He was 
cognisant of a recrudescence of feeling in 
favour of the strait tenets of his childhood's 
orthodoxy. The very air, wafting warm 
scents of moorland, seemed heavy with 
Presbyterian conviction. 

Almost involuntarily he found himself 
reviewing the processes, now logical, now 
arbitrary, by which he had arrived at his 
present tolerance of the principles of Chris- 
tian Science, qualified by an obscurantist 
Panatheism. His early unreasoning accept- 



136 Borrowed Plumes 

ance of U. P. dogma; his tentative excur- 
sions in Kant, followed by a sudden and 
glorious emancipation from the school of 
Peebles; his reaction from the strain of the 
larger Secularism under the Pagan teaching 
of Barbizon and La Boheme; then, at first 
sight of the Eternal City, his volte-face from 
the doctrines of the Latin Quarter to those 
of the Latin Fathers ; the yearning, out of a 
confused memory of Crockett, John Stuart 
Mill, and the Contes Drolatiqiies, to find in 
traditional Authority a sure euthanasia of 
speculative thought; and, finally, the attrac- 
tion towards the new Occidental creed of 
Faith-healing, culminating in an attitude of 
reservation and eclectic detachment. 

Yet the chains of heredity w^ere not to be 
so lightly thrown off. He had been reminded 
of their force as he swallowed his bowd of 
porridge at breakfast. And now, what the 
Scots oatmeal had begun, the heather and 
the gillies and the whining of the Gordon 
setters seemed likely to confirm. For a 
while he almost trembled to think that he 
was on the eve of an atavism. 

The path up to the moor lay through 



Mrs. Humphry Ward 137 

hanging woods lush with dew, aHve with the 
stir of nature. Hellsmere's eyes, Ufted from 
the page of Hume's Essays , fell on a great 
fir-trunk with its russet-red that seemed, 
under a cloudy sky, to retain the fire of 
departed suns. How was that for an image 
of the survival of religious emotions still 
aglow with the colour of discarded creeds? 
The train of thought to which this figure 
gave an impulse was disturbed by a flash of 
gold plumage. A cock-pheasant went whir- 
ring through the brake. A squirrel, beady- 
eyed and tawny-brushed, peered from a pine 
and pursued his spiral ascent. Here and 
there went the bobbing of rabbits' tails 
speeding to shelter. Over the broad leaves 
of water-lilies lying flat on the surface of a 
dusky pool, a moor-hen hurried, dry foot, like 
Israel's host, to the further bank. Hellsmere 
became subconsciously aware that all these 
furred and feathered creatures were actuated 
by a common passion for self-preservation, 
expressing itself in various manifestations 
according to their respective shapes and 
habits. What more natural! What else, 
indeed, was the human cry for immortality 



138 Borrowed Plumes 

but this same instinct in a form perhaps 
more spiritual, certainly more sanguine? 
Could it be possible, he asked himself, that 
the analogy went further ? That the Powers 
above, in the careless calm attributed to 
them by the Lucretian philosophy, had no 
deeper designs on our existence than he, 
Hellsmere, had at that moment on these 
denizens of the woods? 

And yet with them it was not mere 
untutored instinct that warned them to seek 
safety. There had been rude and bitter 
experience. Pheasants had been killed; 
though not, he hoped, in August. As for 
rabbits, they were a perpetual prey. What, 
indeed, was his objective at that moment? 
Was it not the destruction of certain forms 
of life? primarily the grouse, incidentally 
the hare, and, conceivably, the snipe? A 
divine shame smote his heart as he felt in the 
game-pocket of his coat and brought out a 
copy of the Canticle of the Creatures. 

And now the moor stretched before him, 
sweeping up the long low braes of Athol, 
chequered with purple patches, here flaunt- 
ing the conscious symmetry of a draught- 



Mrs. Humphry Ward 139 

board, there counterfeiting the dappled 
shadows of the milch-kine of Apollo. The 
guns spread out into line. The dogs, 
unleashed, bounded forward with drooped 
necks and sentient nostrils lifted up the wind. 
Not even then could Hellsmere escape from 
his attitude of mental absorption. Though 
an early predilection for ratting had 
remained among the most poignant mem- 
ories of his childhood, his subsequent trend 
had been towards metaphysics rather than 
pure animalism. Of a disposition too ana- 
lytical for the comparative directness and 
simplicity of vision required in a perfect 
sportsman, he had sometimes, on occasions 
like the present, been tempted to follow up a 
line of abstract reasoning — associated, per- 
haps, with the identity of his ego — even 
when a crisis, such as the opportunity for a 
right and left, had seemed to demand instan- 
taneous action. This tendency had from 
time to time been detrimental in its effects 
upon the bag. 

And to-day he could not throw off a 
certain obsession of mind caused by his 
reflections upon the Canticle of St. Francis. 



140 Borrowed Plumes 

On reaching- the commencement of the beat 
he had handed this work, along with Hume's 
Essays, Bishop Berkeley's Sermons, and 
Sesame and Lilies, to the man who was carry- 
ing his cartridges ; but the words, " Praise 
Heaven for our sister the grouse," kept 
ringing in his ears. 

The question, too, of intuition in dogs 
arrested his fancy. He derived an appreci- 
able ecstasy from differentiating between the 
instinct of a pointer for the scent of the 
living, and that of a retriever for the scent of 
the dead or dying. How far were these 
qualities inherent in their natures, and how 
far were they a matter of training ? And 
why, in whatever proportions inherited and 
acquired, were they more permanent in 
animals than in men? Why, for instance, 
had he outgrown his taste for Presbyterian- 
ism ? and was it possible for him to revert 
to it by the mere process of reproducing the 
geographical conditions which evolved it ? 

Fascinated by the field of argument opened 
up by these enigmas, he was dimly conscious 
of the subdued voice of the head-keeper 
inviting him to " take a point." Mechani- 



Mrs. Humphrey Ward 141 

cally he walked towards the dog, that stood 
poised like a rigid simulacrum of itself; 
mechanically he advanced beyond it, moving 
as in a dream ; faintly murmuring, " For our 
sister the grouse." 

A sudden nausea seized him, to the partial 
obliteration of the landscape. Was it to be 
tolerated that humanity, not content with 
the use of lethal weapons diabolically pre- 
cise, must needs employ the instincts of one 
of the lower orders of creation for the anni- 
hilation of a sister existence? Surely the 
whole question of our moral responsibility 
to these lower forms, whether we label our- 
selves Positivist, Deist, or Orthodox, was 
here involved. If we hypothecate the exist- 
ence of higher powers, can we count it 
consistent with their Divine nature to play 
off humanity against humanity for their own 
better sport? A Pagan doctrine, only ex- 
cusable in the makers of Trojan and col- 
lateral myths. 

And yet — but it was at this point of his 
internal argument that the birds got up and 
went away unscathed. Nor was this all; for 
the lamentable accident which ensued was a 



142 Borrowed Plumes 

further tribute to the complexity of Hells- 
mere's organism. The desperate character 
of his reflections had reduced him to a state 
of acute scepticism, in which he even per- 
mitted himself to doubt the actuality of all 
phenomena. A wave of subjectivity passed 
over him. Meanwhile he had, as if auto- 
matically, raised his gun in the direction of 
one of the rising birds and placed his finger 
on the trigger of the right barrel. The 
natural completion of this action was ar- 
rested, by an inanition of will-power conse- 
quent upon the absence of his mind. The 
arrest was, however, only temporary. Be- 
fore he could disengage his mind from the 
conclusion that all phenomena were alike in 
the quality of non-existence, he had per- 
formed a kind of reflex movement — the 
result of associated ideas — and pressed the 
trigger home. This happened — in even less 
time than has been required for the narration 
of events — at the moment when his gillie, 
after remarking "Hoot! mon; they're 
awaV' and advancing without further com- 
ment, had reached the position vacated by 



Mrs. Humphry Ward 143 

the bird at which Hellsmere had pointed his 
gun. 

By great good fortune, the major and 
more crowded portion of the discharge was 
intercepted by Bishop Berkeley's Sermons, 
which the man was carrying in an empty 
game-bag skmg across his back. Only the 
outlying shot lodged in his actual body. To 
the inconvenience caused by these pellets 
Hellsmere alluded coldly in the language of 
Christian Science, urging that the injury was 
apparent rather than real ; but when repre- 
sentations were made to him subsequently in 
the gun-room he cancelled his obligations in 
conformity with the usual tariff arranged 
for these regrettable incidents, the scale of 
charges being regulated according to the part 
of the person affected. 

The account of this contretemps, appear- 
ing in the North British papers on the very 
day of the publication of his work on Italian 
Liberty, created a great sensation in the lit- 
erary world, and established the success of 
the volume. It was natural, therefore, that 
his immediate accession to the ranks of the 
Broader Vegetarianism should have been a 



144 Borrowed Plumes 

painful shock to the friends who had 
prophesied for him a poHtical career. Later, 
his assumption of friar's orders in the 
Brotherhood of Assisi caused Httle surprise. 
The transition was regarded as the logical 
issue of his previous departure. 



XIII. 
MR. W. E. HENLEY. 

Out of the large-limbed night, 

Dewy and lush by tasselled glade and lawn, 

The rumble and roar of roistering carts, 

Insistent as the unconsolable sea, 

Rolls in to Covent's ducal marts, 

Groaning with vegetable greenery. 

And, look, the eloquent lark 

Urges his upward indeterminate flight. 

Thus early drunk with joy. Nay, do but hark 

How the lithe milkman at his watery trade 

Maddens the slumber-sodden kitchen-maid 

With virile voluntaries to the dawn 1 

Now, while the City wakes 

To the old implacable game once more. 

To the lucre-lust too hoary for life to slake, 

Let us afield, Dear Boy, and briefly skirt 

The pungent fumes of Piccadilly's floor, 

And press to where the boon and buxom Park 

Trembles through all her shimmering trees, 

alert 

10 145 



146 Borrowed Plumes 

To breathe the inviolate incense borne 

On virgin airs of morn. 

But lo ! what artless cavalcade is here 

That spurns the Rotten Way 

With strenuous four-foot thud and glimpses seen 

Of middle distance, saddle and thigh between, 

Worshipping, Orient-wise, the risen day ? 

Be still, poor fluttering heart, and vail thy fear ! 

This is no heathen orgie ; in their eyes 

I trace no hint of hierophantic mirth ; 

No passionate impulse fires the sombre cheek, 

Sallow with crude 

And unassimilated food ; 

Insane of appetite, but otherwise 

Comparatively sane. 

In these consenting solitudes, 

Ere Fashion's tardier foot invade 

A peace designed for penitential moods, 

Unvexed of the vulgar gaze, they seek 

To blood the anaemic vein 

And stem the stomach's irrepressible girth. 

Behold, it is the Fatty-Liver Brigade 1 



The Turf 

Ri7igi7ig — 

The state of the odds by the layers of odds 

Bruited preposterous 



Mr. W. E. Henley 147 

Over the railings 

Into the plunger's infatuate ear. 

In days that succeeded 

The purely chaotic 

Condition of Nature, 

Rhymeless, amorphous, 

Much Hke the metre 

These verses are made in — 

In the commencement, 

As I was remarking, 

Turf was a feature 

In Eden, the well-known 

Site of Creation. 

There lay the prime horse, 

Absolute, thoroughbred, 

Showing no blot 

In his family 'scutcheon. 

Unbridled, unpaddocked, 

Unnoted of tipsters. 

He took through the Garden 

His usual canter. 

Or sat on me, downy, absorbing his meal. 

Then spake our Parent : 
" Ho ! what a noble beast 1 
He, on his backbone, 
Unless I'm mistaken, 
Will carry posterity 



148 Borrowed Plumes 

Over green places 
On wings of the morning ; 
The joy of my offspring and pride of the 
Race! 

Such was our Forefather's 
Dim adumbration ; 
There have been other 
More recent allusions 
To sport on the flat ; 
This was the first of them ; 
Then and thenceforward 
I am the Turf. 

Circling and sweeping 
Round Tattenham corner, 
Prone down the hillside, 
The hell-trap of Holocaust, 
Flashes the field. 
Out on the home-straight 
(Lo 1 where the Derby dog, 
Openly imbecile. 
Seizes this crucial 
Occasion for crossing) 
Forth fares the favourite 
(Cannon to rear of him) 
Rightly ignoring 
The weight on his withers, 
The subtly prehensile 



Mr. W. E. Henley 149 



Midget from over there ; 
And to the manifest 
Mirth of his backers, 
Lifts his homunculus 
First past the post. 
That is my moment, 
Crowded, delirious ! 
What did I tell you ? 
I am the Turf. 

The Turf 

Turfy— 

The state of the odds by the layers of odds 

Bruited preposterous 

Over the raiHngs 

Into the plunger' s infatuate tympanum — 

I am the Turf. 

* * * ^ 

Night and the starless Void, 
And cloud-rack canopies that veil 
The undiscoverable vault of heaven ; 
And, over the City's coruscating gloom, 
High in his beetling four-square tower. 
Big Ben, the bull's-eyed Constable, 
Flashing his sentinel beam for sign 
How, underneath, the nation's tireless brain 
Seethes at its sacerdotal task of framing laws. 
With swirl of oozy ebb the River goes 



150 Borrowed Plumes 

Bedridden, bargee-blasphemous, 

Lipping the terraced stones 

Outworn with commerce of tea and cakes 

And jaunty legislators' junketings. 

Within, the uncommunicative mace 

(Symbol of that portentous sovereignty 

Which stamps the people's choice, 

Arch-progeny of the proletariate Will) 

Watches the tragic comedy 

Play out its tardy length to stertorous stalls. 

Hark where in windy platitudes, 

Compound of the froth of undigested fact 

And ponderous tub-thump wit of the hustings- 
wag. 

Each for his own advertisement. 

They rant — they bellow — they abuse. 

Here sits the Chief, disturbed 

From healthy spasms of philosophic doubt, 

Politely querulous of his truant ranks 

Once counted adequate 

To play the not-too-exigent part 

Of gentlemanly walkers-on — 

Now damned for irredeemable diners-out. 

There lies the Opposition's fold 

Incurably divided from itself — 

These, ralliant to their country, right or wrong. 

Those, cheek by jowl against her, wrong or 
right. 



Mr. E. W. Henley 151 

And, in the desperate interval, behold 
The dubious Campbell-wether of the flock 
Protagonising in his own despite, 
And butted fore and aft 
Whither not he nor they precisely know. 
This is our Ancient Mother of Parliaments, 
Fallen on dotage-days 
Varied by episodic savagery. 
But, for the rest. 

Abysmal, desolate, irreclaimably dull. 
What have we done to you. 
Mother, O Mother, 

That you requite us with so quaint a farce. 
Such disillusioning parody of your Prime ? 
# * * 4t= 

Inveterate airs that blow 

As from a dim orchestral Age of Brass ; — 

A rout of coryphees that toil and spin 

With lustre of whirling lace and giddy gyre 

Of hose rough-hued to ape 

The arduous leg within ; — 

SaUies of immemorial patriot wit. 

Potent to kill, but impotent to pass ; — 

And lo ! 

London's immeasurable mouth agape 

From gallery to tranced pit 

With worship ; her Imperial eyes aglow 

With the divine ecstatic fire ! 



152 Borrowed Plumes 

There is no male here, this ambrosial night, 

But feels the manhood vocal in his veins. 

There is no woman, if I read them right, 

But in her hidden heart 

Envies yon breezy sylph the art 

By which she turns these virile brains 

To irreducible pulp, and sets the breast 

Apant behind its hedge of shining shirt. 

What unconjecturable spell 

Inspires this exquisite torture of unrest, 

Or where the point of what the humorous mime 

Says, and the sudden midriff splits — 

Not I, who rarely enter here, can tell. 

They, rather, who from unremembered time 

Follow the same old Grace's flying skirt. 

The same old amorous play of pencilled eyes. 

And the unwearied acrobacy of wits 

Reiterate past fear of rude surprise — 

These, lifting voluntaries clear and strong, 

May quire aloud what happy quest is theirs 

Who tread the nightly stairs 

Of London's luminous Halls of Mirth and Song. 



XIV. 
MR. HENRY JAMES. 

[The Sacred Fount.] 

It superficially might have seemed that to 
answer Lady Cheveley's invitation to her 
daughter's wedding was a matter that would 
put no intolerable strain upon the faculties of 
discriminative volition. Yet the accident of 
foreign travel had brought about that this 
formal invitation, found on my return, con- 
stituted my first advertisement of even so 
much as Vivien Cheveley's engagement to 
M. le Comte Richard Sansjambes. The 
original question, simplified as it was by 
public knowledge of the fact that I regard 
all ceremonial functions with a polite abhor- 
rence, had, accordingly, taken on a new 
complexity, involving considerations of a 
high sociologic interest; as, notably, 
IS3 



154 Borrowed Plumes 

whether, and, if at all, in what form, I should 
offer the lady my felicitations. 

My obsession by these problems over a 
space of four-and-twxnty hours was only 
partially relieved by contact with the diver- 
tissements of Piccadilly as I drove to the 
Prytaneum Club. To my hansom's tempo- 
rary arrest, however, attributable to the 
stream of vehicles converging in a transverse 
sense at the corner of St. James's Street, I 
owed an interval of recrudescent delibera- 
tion. During that so tense period I conscien- 
tiously — such is the force of confirmed habit 
• — reviewed all the permissible methods — 
and scarce fewer than a round dozen of 
variants lay at that moment in my right 
breast-pocket — of addressing a woman- 
friend on the occasion of her betrothal. 
Always the equivocal detachment of an 
unrejected bachelor had for me the air of 
imparting to these crises, poignant enough 
in themselves, a touch of invidious dilemma. 
The delicate question why the felicitator 
himself — to hypothecate his eligibility — had 
not been a candidate for the lady's heart, a 
question answerable, on the lips of her 



Mr. Henry James 155 

friends, by a theory of self-depreciation, and, 
on those of her enemies, by one of indiffer- 
ence, remained — unless he chose, as one says, 
to " give himself away " — incapable of 
adequate solution. 

For myself, it is true, by way of a passable 
solace in this cornucopious predicament, 
there was my known prejudice, amounting 
almost, I am told, to a confessed morbidity, 
in favour of the celibate state. It was still, 
however, open to the contention of malice 
that I, nevertheless, conceivably might have 
— whereas, in fact, I had not — submitted to 
the lady's charms, had they — as they appar- 
ently had not — been of a sufficiently over- 
whelming nature. But this, relatively, was, 
after all, a trivial embarrassment, mastered, 
on more occasions, already, than one, by a 
delicate subtlety of diction, in which I permit 
myself to take a pardonable pride. 

'* My dear Miss Vivien," I, recalling the 
terms of a parallel correspondence, had 
written, '' what brings to you, for whom I 
entertain a so profound regard, brings, to 
me also, an exquisite joy." And, again, alter- 
natively, and in a phraseology more instinct 



156 Borrowed Plumes 

with poetry and pith — '' 1, in your gladness, 
am myself glad." And, once more, with, I 
confess, a greater aloofness, yet, at the same 
time, positing, by implication, a plurality of 
suitors to select from : — " Quite indubitably 
enviable is the man on whom your choice 
has fallen." 

But what complicated the situation and 
left me hesitant between these and, roughly, 
some nine other openings, was the reflection 
that, in point of fact, I had never set eyes on 
the Count, nor yet even heard — and with 
this my long absence from England must be 
charged — the lightest tale of him. Mightn't 
it be, after all, a marriage, purely, I asked 
myself, of convenience? — wealth, possibly, a 
title, certainly, exchanged for the asset of 
youthful bloom ? Mightn't it be — and there 
was recorded precedent for this — that the 
man, being French, as one gathered, and 
calling himself by a foreign title — a preten- 
sion, commonly, that invited scepticism — 
had exerted over her some Magic, or even, 
taking into account both his foreignness and 
his Counthood, as much as Two Magics? 
Or, again, most deplorable of all, mightn't 



Mr. Henry James 157 

he have acquired a hold upon her by secret 
knowledge of some skeleton, as the phrase is, 
in her private cupboard; an intrigue, let us 
daringly say, with a former butler, banished 
for that delinquency and harbouring ven- 
geance against her house by the revelation 
of her complicity? 

But here I subconsciously reminded my- 
self that the nicest adepts in abstract psychol- 
ogy may, if they do but sufficiently long 
address themselves to problems abnormally 
occult, become the prey of a diseased ima- 
gination. And by great good luck the for- 
ward movement of my hansom, now disem- 
broiled from the traffic, which had thrown 
off something of its congestion, caused a 
current of air which allowed me, the glass 
being up, a saner purview of the question. 
" When I reach the Prytaneum, I'll," I 
said, " look the gentleman up in the 
Almanack de Gotha/' This, in fact, had been 
among the motives, had been, I might even 
say, the dominating motive, of my visit to 
the Club. 

That atmosphere of considered serenity 
which meets one at the very portals of the 



158 Borrowed Plumes 

Prytaneum, and is of an efficacy so para- 
mount for the allaying of neurotic disorders, 
had already relieved the tension of my intro- 
spective mood by the time that I had entered 
the fumoir and rung for cigarettes and min- 
eral water. The greeting, familiarly curt, 
that reached me from an armchair near the 
fire, was traceable, it appeared, to Guy Mal- 
laby. Here, I was glad to think, I had 
found a living supplement to the Almanack, 
for I remembered him to have been a friend, 
some had even said a blighted admirer, of 
Vivien Cheveley. He had married, whether 
for consolation or from pique, his cook; and 
I now noticed, in a glance that embraced him 
cursorily, that his girth had, since his mar- 
riage, increased by some four to six inches. 
It could scarce be more than a rude esti- 
mate, viewing the fact that I had no tape- 
measure about me, an adjunct that I from 
time to time have found serviceable in cases 
that, apparently, called for mere psychologic 
diagnosis ; nor, had I so had, am I convinced 
that I should, in this instance, have allowed 
myself the application of it. Simply I moved 
towards him, and, at the same time, yielding 



Mr. Henry James 159 

to the usage which a twelve-months absence 
requires, held out my hand. He took it with, 
as I thought, a certain surprise, quickly 
dissembled, but not, as I repeat, before I'd 
mentally remarked it. 

At any other juncture I should have been 
closely tempted to pursue the train of infe- 
rence suggested by this phenomenon; but 
just then, for the moment, I was preoccupied. 
Besides, anyhow, his initial observation 
proved his astonishment to be derived from 
a quite transparent, if not altogether venial, 
cause. " Been out of town," he asked, '* for 
Christmas?" I confess that, though I had 
the good breeding not to betray it, this 
speech, the tone of which, under ordinary 
conditions, would not have affected me to the 
point of regarding it as a truancy beyond the 
prescribed bounds of gentlemanly casualness, 
caused me, having regard to the circum- 
stance of my long absence, a calculable pain 
in my amour propre. Never so vividly had 
not merely the complexity, almost cosmic, of 
life in the Metropolis, its multiform interests 
and issues so exigently absorbing, but also 
the inconspicuousness of the vacuum created 



i6o Borrowed Plumes 

by the withdrawal of any single — in this case 
my own — personality, been forced upon my 
attention. 

Here, again, at any other time, I should 
have found abundant matter for analysis; 
but the entrance of the waiter with my cig- 
arettes and mineral w^ater, one of the former 
of which I deliberately lighted, recalled me 
from this inviting diversion. By a natural 
process of reaction I become cognisant of 
the necessity, every moment more pressing, 
of composing an answer to Mallaby's ques- 
tion. 

Scarce anything could have been easier 
than so to impregnate my reply with the 
truth, whole and unadulterated, as to compel, 
on his side, an embarrassment which I, for 
one, should have view^ed, in the retrospect, 
as regrettable. Yet, for a full three-quarters 
of a minute, towards the latter half of which 
period it was evident that Mallaby conceived 
my memory to have strangely lapsed, the 
temptation possessed me to follow the course 
I have just indicated. But, in the issue — 
whether more from a desire to spare his 
feelings, or, at least as much, because the 



Mr. Henry James i6i 

practice of finesse, even in conjunctions of 
negligible import, has had for me always a 
conquering fascination, I cannot determine 
— I, with a terseness sufficiently antiphonal 
to his own replied :— " Yes, Monte Carlo/*' 
Then, from an apprehension that he might 
follow up his enquiries — for my travels had, 
in actual fact, been confined to Central Asia 
and the transit there and in an opposite sense 
— or invite a reciprocal curiosity, on my 
part, in regard to his Christmas, '' By the 
way," I, as if by a natural continuity of 
thought, added, '' who is this Count Richard 
Sansjambes that is to marry Miss Cheve- 
ley ? " At the same time, not to appear too 
intrigued by the matter in question, I with- 
drew my cigarette from my mouth, flicked it 
lightly in air, and then abstractedly replaced 
it, less the ash. 

I'd scarce done asking myself whether I'd 
formulated my enquiry into the identity of 
this Sansjambes with an air of sufficient 
detachment, or, in default of this, had so 
clearly underlined the suggestion of indiffer- 
ence by my manner of manipulating my cig- 
arette as to assure myself against the possible 



II 



1 62 Borrowed Plumes 

suspicion, easily avoidable, I had hoped, of a 
too immediately concerned curiosity, when 
'' Ah ! the fellow without legs ! " replied Mal- 
laby, with, as it, perhaps unwarrantably, 
seemed to me, a levity so flippant that it 
might have appalled a controversialist less 
seasoned by practice than I'd the permissible 
satisfaction of crediting myself with the re- 
putation of being. 

" But you have not then lost it? " I threw 
off, on a note of implicit irony. 

''Lost what?" he asked. 

" Your old facility, of course, in jeux 
d'esprit," I explained. 

" On the contrary," he replied, " my 
translation of Sansjambes is not more literal 
than the facts themselves ! " 

His answer was so quite what I had not 
foreseen, that I was surprised, as by a sudden 
reflex jerk of the muscles, into an unwonted 
lucidity of diction. 

" How did he lose them ? " I asked. 

" He didn't ; he never had any to lose ! " 
Mallaby, with unnecessary brutality, replied. 
" An early ancestor lost his under the walls 
of Acre. Pre-natal influences affected his 



Mr. Henry James 163 

« 

first-born, and ever since then the family has 
had no legs in the direct line." 

'' But the title ? "—I was still too alto- 
gether the sport of siirexcitation nicely to 
weigh my words. 

" The gallant ancestor's own choice — 
prior, naturally, to the birth of his heir — to 
perpetuate the deed of prowess that won it. 
And his descendants take it on as a matter 
of pride." 

By this I'd sufficiently recovered my habi- 
tual aplomb to be in a position, while reserv- 
ing my perfected conclusions for a less 
disturbing occasion, to collate, as I sipped 
my drink, a few notes on the comparative 
periods of sustained effervescence in the 
cases, respectively, of Seltzer and Salutaris. 

" And the cause you assign to this pro- 
jected marriage?" I then, less with a desire 
for enlightenment, asked, than, my own 
judgment being made up to the point of 
finality, to seem to flatter him by an appeal 
to his. 

" Oh, there's money, of course," he an- 
swered. " But that isn't all. It's the old tale 



164 Borrowed Plumes 

— Eve, apple, curiosity, with a touch of the 
brute thrown in ! " 

You could have knocked me down, in the 
vulgar phrase, with a feather. Here was 
Guy Mallaby, immeasurably my unequal in 
fineness of spirit, laying his fat finger plumb 
on the open offence, while I was still com- 
placently nosing it on a false scent of 
Womanly Pity. True, he had enjoyed a 
three-months start of me in the running 
down of a mystery that doubled too distract- 
ingly on its traces for that instinctive Hair to 
which I hitherto had urged a predominant 
claim; or was it the cook-wife that had 
piqued, through the stomach's Sacred Fount, 
his intellectual appetite? Gratuitously to 
admit him my superior on the strength of a 
forestalled judgment was the last of a quite 
surprising number of alternatives that just 
then occurred to me. 

" I'm going to look in on Lady Jane," I 
made evasion. 

'' She'll, if she's honest, endorse my con- 
jecture; she's a woman! " he, without hesita- 
tion, observed. 

More interestingly stimulated than I 



Mr. Henry James 165 

could, at the moment, remember to have been 
by any previous visit to the Prytaneum, I 
made my way westward down the Mall of 
St. James's Park, taking the broad boulevard 
on the left. In the particular atmosphere of 
exaltation by which I perceived myself to be 
environed, it was easy to image these wid- 
owed avenues in their midsummer fulness, 
to revive their inarticulate romance, to re- 
store, in the grand style, the pomp of their 
verdurous pageantry. Oh, there was quite 
enough of analogy to reclothe a whole Arden 
of As you like it ! It was really portentous 
on what a vista of alluring speculations I'd 
all but originally stumbled; virgin forest, in 
fact, before the temerity of just one pioneer, 
and that a woman, had stripped it this very 
summer so pitilessly bare. With how fine 
an abstraction from the moralities I'd, in the 
way of pure analysis, have probed its 
fungus-roots, have dissected its saffron- 
bellied toads, have sampled its ambiguous 
spices. And to have utilised a legless abor- 
tion for the genius of its undergrowths ! 

But I soon became aware of an appreciable 
recoil from the initial acerbity of my self- 



1 66 Borrowed Plumes 

reproach at being anticipated by the author 
of Sir Richard Calmady, when, upon a more 
meticulous reflection — for, by this time, I'd 
arrived opposite the footpath leading over 
the bridge that commands the lake and its 
collection, recognisably unique, of water- 
fowl — I'd convinced myself how little of 
consonance was to be found between this 
theme and the general trend of my predilec- 
tions. About the loves of a so ineffable 
prodigy — and to differentiate them as lawful 
or lawdess didn't, for me, modify the fact of 
their uniform repulsiveness — I detected a 
quality something too preposterously fla- 
grant, an element im pcu trop criajtt of pun- 
gent indelicacy. It needed only this flash of 
recognition at once to disabuse me of all 
regret for having been forestalled in the 
treatment of a subject of wdiich the narrow 
scope it offered for the play of hypersen- 
sitised subtlety remained the incurably fatal 
defect. 

So immediate, indeed, and so absolute was 
my mental recovery that I had scarce cleared 
the fagade of Buckingham Palace and ad- 
dressed myself to what I have, from time to 



Mr. Henry James 167 

time, regarded as the almost contemptibly 
easy ascent of Constitution Hill, before I had 
in mind to rush to the opposite extreme, 
totally, in fact, to disregard the relation of 
legs to the cjuestion at issue. I won't, I said, 
allow the hereditary absence of this feature 
from the Count's ensemble to prejudice, one 
way or another, the solution, which I hope 
ultimately to achieve, of the original prob- 
lem, namely, should I, or shouldn't I, offer 
my congratulations to Vivien Cheveley ? and 
that second problem, subordinately asso- 
ciated with the first, namely, what form, if 
any, should those congratulations assume? 
But I was instantly to perceive the super- 
precipitancy of my revulsion. It imposed 
itself, and with a clarity past all possible 
ignoring, that in this matter of the Count's 
legs the introduction of a new element — or, 
to be accurate, the withdrawal of an old one 
so usual as to have been carelessly assumed 
— was bound, whatever dissimulation was 
attempted, to command notice. The gentle- 
man's lower limbs were, to an undeniably 
overwhelming degree, conspicuous, as the 
phrase runs, by their absence. A fresh con- 



1 68 Borrowed Plumes 

dition, as unique as it was unforeseen, had, 
with a disturbing vitality, invaded what had 
given promise, in the now remote outset, of 
being an argument on merely abstract and 
impersonal lines. For, even if one postu- 
lated in the bride the delicatest of motives, a 
passion, let us assume, to repair a defect of 
Nature, as much as to say, figuratively, 
'' You that are blind shall see through my 
eyes," or, more literally, '' You, having no 
legs to speak of, are to find in me a vicarious 
locomotion," even so a sensitive creature 
might wince at the suspicion that the lan- 
guage of congratulation was but a stammer- 
ing tribute to the quality, in her, of inscru- 
table heroism. 

And there was still an equal apprehension 
to deplore, should it appear that it was to an 
artistic faculty, on the lady's part, capable, 
imaginatively, of reconstructing, from the 
fragmentary outlines of his descendant, the 
originally unimpaired completeness of the 
gallant ancestor — much as the old moon 
shows dimly perfect in the hollow of the 
young crescent — that the Count owed his 
acceptability in her eyes. 



Mr. Henry James 169 

** There it is ! " I said, and at the same 
moment inadvertently grasped the extended 
hand of a constable at the corner of Hamil- 
ton Place; " there's no escaping from the 
obsession of this inexorable fact. It colours 
the whole abstract problem only a little less 
irritatingly than, I can well believe, it has 
coloured the poor Count's existence." And 
I'd scarce so much as begun to exhaust the 
possible bearings of the case in their absorb- 
ing relation to simply me, as distinct from 
the parties more deeply committed and so, 
presumably, exposed to the impact of yet 
other considerations. 

For, what lent a further complexity to the 
situation was that, even to suppose me ar- 
rived at the conclusion, effectively supported, 
that her motive for this so painfully trun- 
cated alliance was commendable, it still left 
her the liberty, accentuated by the conditions 
at which I have glanced, to misinterpret 
mine in congratulating her upon it. And if, 
on the other hand, her engagement were 
attributable to unworthy or frivolous causes, 
wouldn't the consciousness of this, on her 



170 Borrowed Plumes 

side, give even stronger countenance to a 
suspicion of mere impertinence on mine? 

That her motive indeed had been no better 
than one of curiosity — mother Eve's, in fact, 
for exploring the apple-tree — was the con- 
tention of Mallaby, and by him expressed 
with so resolved an assurance that it had, as 
I only now remembered, won me over, at the 
time, by its convincing probability. Hadn't 
his confidence even gone the length of claim- 
ing Lady Jane as of the same camp? And 
this recalled for me, what I had temporarily- 
ignored in the so conflicting rush of ideas, 
the primary objective of my present discur- 
sion. rd overlooked the bifurcation of ways 
where the traverse to South Audley Street 
leads in the direction of Lady Jane's house; 
and now was poising irresolutely before 
crossing at the convergence of Upper Brook 
Street and Park Lane. 

But after all, I asked myself, was a 
woman's final word really just the thing I 
stood in dearest need of in so nice a hesi- 
tancy ? If / was conscious of a certain strain 
in seeking to confine this incident of freakish 
abbreviation to its properly obscure place in 



Mr. Henry James 171 

the picture, would not she, with all her sex's 
reluctance to attack any question from an 
abstract standpoint, experience an insuper- 
able difficulty in assig-ning to the Count's 
deficiency its relative '' value " ? And 
mightn't I, in a moment of unguarded gal- 
lantry, of simulated deference, let me put it, 
to her (Lady Jane's) assumption of a larger 
knowledge of women, or, say, simply a more 
profound intimacy with the particular 
woman, be carried away, against what I 
foresaw, even at this incipient stage of my 
reflections, would, in the event, turn out to 
be my better judgment, on a veritable whirl 
of grossly material considerations? At 
worst, after all, there's still, I said, the last 
resort of an answer in the third person, de- 
clining the wedding invitation on a plea, 
strictly untrue, of an earlier engagement. 
Meantime, while so many hitherto unre- 
garded aspects of the matter called on my 
intelligence for their dues, the fabric of my 
problem was, I told myself, of a delicacy too 

exquisite for 

{Left reflecting on kerbstone. 



XV. 

M. MAURICE MAETERLINCK. 

[I. — Drama.] 

Hark ! One would say there is a symbol 
coming down the corridor. Oh! Oh! 

5fj Hf * * 

Nineteenth Deaf Man. I cannot hear any- 
thing; and my eyesight is defective. 

Deafest Deaf Man. I do not know what 
he is saying. I do not know what anybody 
is saying. 

Least Deaf Man. I am glad that I am 
not blind. It must be very inconvenient to 
be blind. 

9|C 3|C 5jC J|C 

Where is my pet lamb ? I do not see it on 
the sofa as usual. Ah! ah! I smell mint- 
sauce. No, I will not take any luncheon 
to-day. I loved it so. It was not altogether 
172 



M. Maurice Maeterlinck 173 

like other lambs. It was more ominous. 
And now it is cold! 

* * * * 
Hush! Not so loud. Sister Ann may 

overhear you. She is a hundred and twenty- 
five yards away under a willow; but you 
never can tell how far her soul reaches. 
Perhaps it covers as much as three acres. 

^r 'o *** I* 

Sister Migraine, I have a headache. Have 
you a headache, Sister Migraine ? I think I 
am going to be very unhappy. 

^ ^ ^ 'n 

I ought not to sit on the edge of a well 
and keep on throwing my wedding-ring into 
the sun. What shall I do if I drop it into 
the water? There! I have dropped it into 
the water! What shall I do? 

5fC ^ ^ 1* 

There is somebody the other side of the 
door. There is always somebody the other 
side of a door. 

* * * * 

My hair inundates my entire being. It is 
longer than two of me. Oh, see, it has come 



174 Borrowed Plumes 

right down from the balcony. No, no, you 
must not try and dimb up by it. 

;|c H« * * 

Did I wrench your arms too much? No? 
Yet I heard your bones sigh together like 
little mice in a wainscot. Do not look at 
me so aloofly, as if your soul were for ever in 
the next room. 

* * * 5{t 

My eyes will not close. Why will not my 
eyes close ? I must very soon say something 
to somebody. 

^ H* >K sN 

Oh ! Oh ! I have a pain in my destiny. It 
is just here. It is not indigestion. Oh, no! 
it is certainly not indigestion. [This makes 
a very good ending.] 

JJS ^ ifj }{{ 

[At the Royalty Theatre,] 
Pelleas. It is dark, Melisande. Can you 

see to work in the dark, Melisande? 

Melisande. Yes. I can see to work in 

the dark. But it is not dark, Pelleas. The 

limelight goes all round me. Cannot you 

see the limelight all round me? 

Yniold (at the window). There's little 



M. Maurice Maeterlinck 175 

papa ! there's little papa ! I am going to 
meet little papa ! [Exit. 

Pelleas. Your husband will find us in the 
dark together. 

Melisande. No ; he will not find us in the 
dark together. There is limelight all about 
me. Did I not tell you there is limelight all 
about me? 

[Enter Golaud and little Yniold, the latter 
with a zvax-candle.] 

Golaud. You two were in the dark to- 
gether. 

Melisande {fretfully). No; we were not 
in the dark together. There is limelight all 
over me. Cannot you see the limelight all 
over me? I called the attention of Pelleas 
to it just now; but he keeps on forgetting 
about it. 

Yniold. I have brought a candle. Oh, 
look, little papa ; she has been crying ! Little 
mamma has been crying! 

Golaud. Do not hold the candle under her 
eyes! 

Melisande. I do not mind the candle if he 
likes to hold it under my eyes. The candle 
is of no use whatever. The candle is less 



176 Borrowed Plumes 

than the Hmehght. Anybody can see by the 
Hmehght that I have been crying. 

Golaiid. I do not Hke the look of things. 
Still, there is the limelight, as she says. The 
limelight must have somebody to work it. 
I will go and ask some questions of the 
limelight-man. 



[II.— Philosophy.] 

Events happen ; but sometimes they tarry 
and need encouragement from us. At the 
age of fourteen we may be aware that we 
are ordained to die at thirty ; yet we may go 
to meet destiny halfway, by jumping off a 
-precipice at two-and-twenty. 

* * * H! 

One could always tell which of one^s 
schoolfellows was going to die accidentally 
young. They used to walk apart under 
trees; generally willows. 

* * :jj Hf 

I have known people who began by being 
beside themselves, and gradually got quite a 



M. Maurice Maeterlinck 177 

long distance away. And they never knew 
till somebody called their attention to it. 

He ^ 5{= * 

Each one of us has a star from which 
descends one woman only, however multi- 
fold her disguises. Superficially, one would 
say that Bluebeard had several wives. This 
is an error. He was actually monogamous. 

Hs * * * 

It matters not on what subject the pre- 
destined talks. It may be that her speech is 
of a new bangle that she covets. None the 
less it is on the roof-tiles of the immeasurable 
that we float together. 

* * * * 

Some people are less fortunate than 
others ; some are more so. For these an event 
beckons behind every blasted willow. They 
cannot open a door at the end of the simplest 
subterranean passage, without running into 
a booby-trap, or a crouching allegory, or 
something. 

* * * * 

The persons of the Old Tragedy had no 
leisure left from the thousand and thousand 
claims of murder or suicide. Yet the real 
12 



178 Borrowed Plumes 

tragedy of life is found in the domestic bliss 
of the family circle. 

The spectacle of a plain, fourfooted cow 
sitting alone with her destiny, chewing the 
cud, and altogether unconscious of the laws 
of the Equinox, has in it I know not what of 
tragic that moves me more than the crash of 
conflicting mastodons. 

i{j ^ ^ sfj 

The true force of the drama lies not in 
making your characters say the things that 
are indispensable to the situation ; but in 
making them think the thoughts that do not 
occur to them. Sometimes these may be 
represented by a loud aside without paren- 
theses. But silence is also good; for it is, I 
know not how, by the things we omit to say 
that the sources of the soul become intel- 
ligible. Still, it is all very difficult. 



XVI. 

MR. G. BERNARD SHAW. 

It was never my intention that the dis- 
abilities which hampered the many strong 
men who preceded Agamemnon should 
hamper me. They were, I take it, a brainless 
crew, busy with doing things instead of get- 
ting themselves talked about. There is 
always a solution (which seems to have 
escaped them) for the difficulty of finding a 
sacred bard to record you. Be your own 
sacred bard. 

* ii« * * 

In most periods the lonely genius, who is 
afterwards described as the outcome of his 
age, though he invariably has to create the 
taste by which he is ultimately appreciated, 
has been regarded, if regarded at all by his 
jejune contemporaries, as a poseur. It hap- 
pens that I have been so regarded, and 
179 



i8o Borrowed Plumes 

rightly. Now, to correct the unhappy results 
of such an impression, in itself accurate, 
there is one salutary antidote. It is to pose 
about your pose. That is what I am doing 
now. 

* * * * 

The middle classes, fed to suffocation on 
the Romanticism of drawing-room drama 
and the Family Herald, take unkindly to the 
social iconoclast. It is, therefore, the busi- 
ness of this, the highest type of philanthropic 
reformer, to include his own image, or eikon, 
among those that he sets out to pulverise 
beyond hope of recognition. Let him engage 
himself as his own Aunt Sally, and so estab- 
lish the impartiality of his critical attitude. 

^ ^ 'J^ 5jC 

I have a right horror of the egoism which 
finds amusement in making an enigma of 
itself at the expense of a public that has an 
itch for personal revelation. My moral posi- 
tion is of an almost pellucid transparency. I 
am an intellectual Puritan to the finger-tips, 
with an affectionate tolerance for the can- 
dour of a Mercutio. That is a conjunction, 
surely, that asks no apologic explication. 



Mr. G. Bernard Shaw 1 8 1 

And I will be yet more open with the world, 
and declare myself the charlatan I am. If 
I have given my friends to understand that I 
am immeasurably superior to Shakespear, I 
was trading upon their credulity. In point 
of fact, he is very nearly my equal; as a 
dramatic technician, that is; not, of course, 
as an exponent of latter-day philosophy. 

Perhaps the most pathetic feature in the 
modern drama — and Shakespear himself is 
not altogether blameless in this connection — 
is its fatuous penchant for associating action 
with motive. Yet, in real life, if there is one 
thing more obvious than another (which I 
doubt) it is that the commonest motive for 
action is to have none at all. Take arson. 
You will say that arson is a relatively un- 
typical expression of energy. On the con- 
trary, I see it mentioned in the papers at 
least once a quarter. Take arson, then. Do 
we ever find that jealousy, hatred, revenge — 
those darling bugbears of the Romantic 
stage — have been the motives for this form 
of action? Seldom, or never. People in 
actual life commit arson as a medicine for 



1 82 Borrowed Plumes 

ennui, to make pass the time ; or else out of a 
morbid curiosity for noting the play of fire- 
lig-ht on neighbouring scenery; motives so 
inconspicuous that they are habitually 
ignored, just as they would most certainly 
be flouted in those hotbeds of Romanticism, 
the theatre and the law-courts. 



Or, again, take Love, which is popularly 
supposed to be more common than arson. 
When has Love ever constituted a motive 
for action? Only in the last decade or so, 
under the influence of sentimental drama. 
So vacant, indeed, are my countrymen of all 
original imagination that the decadent stage, 
masquerading as the mirror of humanity, 
has actually imposed its own conventions 
of Love upon the very lives from which it 
professed to draw them. 

5jC >iC 3^ 'I^ ' 

I have elsewhere said that ''ten years of 
cheap reading have changed the English 
from the most stolid nation in Europe to the 
most theatrical and hysterical." I would go 
further and point to the terrible corruption in 



Mr. G. Bernard Shaw 183 

foreign manners bred of contact with British 
decadence. Travel, as I have done, among 
the Latin races, and mark the recent changes 
in their demeanour. In rural byways they 
still retain that decorum of carriage and 
behaviour which comes of unspoiled inter- 
course with earth. But in the cities, and 
even in those villages that lie upon the tour- 
ist's beaten track, you will recognise the 
growth of demonstrativeness in their ges- 
tures, and of pseudo-dramatic methods in 
their deportment. What is the cause of this 
degeneracy ? They have become infected by 
the deadly germs of that Anglomania which 
is also responsible for their recent adoption 
of manly sports, so-called, and other intoler- 
able brutalities. 



To recur to the subject of accepted con- 
ventions — what hope is there for the salva- 
tion of audiences saturated with artificiality ? 
None, though it were my own lips that 
essayed to recall them to the real. Go back 
to Italy's Venice, after witnessing Its 
counterfeit in Olympia, and you will never 



184 Borrowed Plumes 

" recapture the first fine careless rapture." 
I am, so to speak, the original Venice. 

* * * * 
There is a tale told of certain visitors at 

the court of a semi-barbaric king, who of- 
fered to supply him with a nightingale, a 
bird of which hitherto he had no cognisance. 
During a temporary delay in its arrival they 
sought to appease the monarch by producing 
an instrument guaranteed to emit music of 
the same order. So beglamored was the king 
by its ravishing melodies that on the ultimate 
appearance 6i the actual warbler he dis- 
missed the latter with contumely as a poor 
imitation of the original. I am, as it were, 
the real nightingale. 

* * * * 

A constant and fatal error with play- 
mongers is to imagine that there are themes, 
within the scope of their intelligence, which 
can appeal at once to the gilded Semite of 
the Stalls and the School Board alumni of 
the gallery. I say they have no single senti- 
ment of pleasure in common. At times they 
are bored by the same things, but interested 
in the same things never. It may satisfy 



Mr. G. Bernard Shaw 185 

Mr. Kipling's sense of the realities to assert 
that " the Colonel's Lady and Judy 
O'Grady " (on the strength) " are sisters 
under their skins." But, to take him on his 
own restricted lines, I happen myself to have 
made a study of armies (see my Arms and 
the Man), and I differ from him fearlessly 
and without pity. 

2fC 5jC 5ji >(C 

I have little sympathy for the writer who 
is lured from the strait road of Art by a 
passion for pedantic consistency in the gen- 
eral purposes, if any, of his drama. I hesi- 
tate to quote myself as a brilliant example of 
the contrary method; but I still think it was 
a happy thought to put my most modern 
criticisms into the mouth of a contemporary 
of Octavian; and another, though not quite 
so happy, to assign the exposition of my 
best twenty-first century philosophy (for it 
will take till then for the public to apprehend 
me) to a ^' Devil's Disciple " of the eight- 
eenth. I may have faults, but a taste for 
academic purity is not one of them. 
* * * * 

Nor do I pretend to say beforehand 



1 86 Borrowed Plumes 

whether any given play of mine is intended 
for a tragedy or a farce. I choose to leave 
this matter to the audience to decide, having 
a rooted belief in the subjective plasticity of 
all great work. I have known my senti- 
ments elicit laughter when I had privately 
anticipated tears; and I have seen the house 
divided, pit from stalls, as to which of these 
two receptions should be accorded to a 
speech of which the intention was equally 
ambiguous to myself. In the game of poker, 
as I am given to believe, the most accom- 
plished artists are those who play without 
any settled principles of their own, thus per- 
mitting their motives to escape observation. 
Misunderstand yourself, if you would make 
doubly sure of a position as one of the Great 
Misunderstood. 

* * * * 

I merit, of course, the abuse of the critics, 
who find themselves at a loss to arrange their 
labels on accepted lines; and the pubHc is 
inclined to grow captious through inability 
to confirm their suspicions of an underlying 
sense in my plays; but, without some guar- 
antee of popular disfavour, one trembles to 



Mr. G. Bernard Shaw 187 

imagine what would become of one's hesita- 
ting self-esteem. 



To the great Artist there is always some- 
thing inebriative in unsuccess; and though 
there may be danger of over-exultation in- 
duced by a run of splendid failures, it is 
better to perish this way than to die, as some 
successful authors have died, of a fatty de- 
generation of the brain. 

* * * * 

In conclusion I would join issue with 
those rash intellects that have assigned to 
me, thus early, a permanent seat among the 
Immortals. Admitted that I have the ad- 
vantage of Sophocles and Goethe in enjoying 
a wider range of vision, I am very Httle, if at 
all, their superior in point of actual genius. 
But in my own case, as in theirs, I protest 
against the indefinite survival of reputations. 
The ages should always advance from great 
to greater, as their purview of humanity 
largens. And if this little collection of 
homilies should avail to check that tendency 
to Cock-Shawolatry which threatens, among 



1 88 Borrowed Plumes 

the chosen few, to perpetuate my claims as 
an Authority, neither I nor my readers will 
rightly grudge the pains we shall severally 
have expended upon this result. 



XVII. 
MR. STEPHEN PHILLIPS. 

[On the Production of " Herod:'^ 

How like a timorous sloth of tender years 

My reputation hangs upon a Tree ! 

Bravely it bears my weight ; and yet the blood 

Sings in my brain, not altogether used 

To being upside-down. 

I seem to hear 
The strain of all the heart-strings in the stalls. 
And all the public breathing in the pit ! 
Now is the climax when the author's pulse 
Is at its hottest ; now the crucial scene, 
When everything is blank, besides the verse, 
And either Herod or myself goes mad ! 

{Later>) 
We stand together wreathed in wedded smiles ; 
I never thought a Tree could spread such bows. 
* * =# # 

\0n Australian Federation^ 

I heard a Cherub sitting up aloft 
Cry : " She shall build a mighty Metropole 
189 



190 Borrowed Plumes 

Almost at once ; and in its port shall swim 
The Universal Sailor girt with sharks ; 
And bastioned forts shall beetle over that 

Locality where comes to birth." 

(This space is left for the New City's name, 
A vexed and indeterminate question ; I 
Will pay a topaz for the Missing Word.) 

[Murmurs of satis/action. 
There shall the kangaroo bound at his ease, 
And there the Federated Lands shall build 
(Australia ! do you notice this remark ?) 
A Stock Exchange, where Ophir and the East 
Shall vie for options ; with whose hoarded 

wealth 
The fabled pearls of Solomon, deceased. 
Shall relatively rank as pumpkin-pips ! 
There the Coagulated Parliament, 
Incurious of cost, shall house itself 
In walls barbarically fine and large, 
Shaped to discapitol that ancient Arx^ 
The tutelary haunt of Roman geese ! 

One night I dreamed (Australia ! please attend) 
About this Chamber, how its dome should shine 
With burnished nuggets drawn from neighbour- 
ing deeps, 
Great Boulder's ore, and ooze of Ivanhoe, 
To be an educative object-lesson 



Mr. Stephen Phillips 191 

To the great L. C. C.'s artificers 

Absorbed in wedding Holborn with the Strand. 

Only a few more words and I have done. 

{^Repressed applause. 
There shall the Sun replace his blighted beams, 
And there about a new Endymion's neck 
Pale Artemis shall arch her ambient arms. 
Before the glamour of its aureate rays 
The scalp-compelling South-Sea islanders 
Shall veil their tomahawks ; and it shall be 
A joy to earnest heliographists, 
And warm the chattering spooks of Diemen's 

Land. 
There shall the wide-world wombat flap his 

wings, 
And there, itself a prey to fascination, 
The boa-constrictor, stealing up to town. 
Shall ask the rabbit what the deuce it means. 



XVIII. 
MR. HENRY SETON MERRIMAN. 

*' I WANT a new place to be a hero iri! " 
The speaker ended, as he began, abruptly. 
Silence is golden, but the next best thing is 
that your words should be fit and few. He 
was a strong man, but his eye had the quiet 
reserve that may sometimes be found with 
strength, a combination always attractive. 
There were lines, too, about his mouth that 
revealed a capacity for pathos as well as 
humour. 

None of these characteristics, except per- 
haps his strength (a dangerous thing if 
allied to madness), imposed itself upon the 
observation of the young man whom he ad- 
dressed — a clerk in the office of Messrs. 
Gaze, Catchem and Cook. 

"Is it a holiday tour you want?" he 
asked, tentatively. 

192 



Mr. Henry Seton Merriman 193 

'' Mention a few novelties/' replied the 
strong, quiet man. 

" We are booking a good deal for the 
interior of Turkey," said the clerk. 

'' Fought at Plevna/' replied the strong, 
quiet man. 

*' Then we have the Steppes of Russia on 
our new list." 

" Shogom — Lord love you ! Sowed wild 
oats there years ago." 

" Or a little round in Spain or Holland, 
personally conducted ? " 

'' Quien sabef Hoe laat is hetf Speak 
the languages." 

^' Or say West Africa, perhaps ? We are 
fitting out a small punitive expedition." 

** Played with Edged Tools there in my 
youth." 

" Or Patagonia ? The very latest thing 
in explorations ! " 

" Ah ! I have never been a hero there. 
Any other heroes pioneering in those 
parts? " 

" Only one that I know of, and he's just 
back from tracking the Big Sloth." 



13 



194 Borrowed Plumes 

'' Sloth is a great impediment to enter- 
prise." 

" I said the Big Sloth." 

" That makes it no better. Quantity is 
no excuse for bad quality. But, tell me, are 
the natives of Patagonia good and beauti- 
ful?" 

" We have no reports to the contrary," 
said the clerk. 

" A noble wife is a gift of the gods," said 
the strong, quiet man, absent-mindedly. 
Then, recovering himself, he added, '' I will 
trouble you for a Tierra del Fuego Conver- 
sation Guide. Mille remerciments! Leb' 
wo hi. Hasta manana. Che sard sard.*' 



XIX. 

MR. ANDREW LANG. 

[In one of his many collaborations, this time 
with Ouida.] 

It is a commonplace of your anthropo- 
logist that the symptoms of heredity are 
more marked in early Spring. In the case 
of young Bamborough, a strain of the old 
Jacobite stock of Northumberland which 
stood for the '' King " at Preston always 
announced itself with a certain exigency 
about the close of Lent. It was apparent 
not so much in an attitude of direct opposi- 
tion to the House of Hanover as in a general 
restlessness under authority, a penchant for 
rising to occasions. Had Oxford known 
him in the '15, when Ormond failed to rouse 
Devon, he would probably have risked his 
head in the North with Mar and Derwent- 
water and the boy Radcliffe. As it was, he 
19s 



196 Borrowed Plumes 

was merely gated by his Dean for cutting 
chapel. [Here Ouida takes up the work. 

Sitting in his tapestried chambers after 
College Mess, his oak was suddenly un- 
sported, and in burst the Hon. Bobbie Lack- 
land in a gold and purple dressing-gown. 
" Just had a wire from Mortlake, old boy/'* 
he cried, slapping Bamborough on the chest. 
*' No. I in the boat has wrung his withers, 
and they want you to stroke Oxford in the 
race to-morrow." 

"When do they start?" asked Bambor- 
ough, wearily. 

" Eleven sharp, against the ebb," replied 
Lackland. 

" As you please, then," said Bamborough, 
with a yawn. " I have a wine here to-night ; 
but I can run up to town in the tandem about 
daybreak, instead of turning in. Suppose 
a tenner would see the porter ? Have a cigar 
or two." \_Hcre Mr. Lang resumes. 

The reader will draw his own conclusions 
from the data here submitted. I, for one, 
shall not be hurt if he traces in the methods 
of these young gentlemen an inherent lack of 
probability. 



XX. 

MR. GEORGE MOORE. 

Rebecca Gins walked down the lane put- 
ting her feet forward alternately. There 
were hedges on both sides; one on the left, 
one on the right. The young leaves were a 
pale green. Overhead ran the telegraph- 
wires. The poles were about thirty-five yards 
apart. A thrush sat on a spray of black- 
thorn, which moved under its weight, now 
down, now up. Rain had fallen and the 
ground was wet, especially in the ruts. The 
second-hand feather in Rebecca's hat 
drooped a little over her left ear; and the 
third button of her off boot was wanting. 
Smoke went up from the chimneys, taking 
the direction of the wind. All these essential 
details (including the feather, which was out 
of sight) escaped Rebecca's notice. She was 
197 



198 Borrowed Plumes 

not gifted with that grasp of actuaUty which 
is the sign of an artistic nature. 



My Dear Yeats, — You, who have taught 
me what Poetry means, in the original Fe- 
nian (I had already, at different epochs of my 
career, been introduced to Music and the 
Fine Arts, and pursued my investigation of 
these branches of culture without prejudice 
or pedantry, fascinated always by the charm 
of novelty and the delight of breaking virgin 
soil), you and I will offer welcome and the 
homage of hearts to the noble victim of that 
Tyrant whose foot is on the neck of our 
distressful Erin. We will cross by the 
Ostend Packet. It wull start from Dover, 
either from the east or the west side of the 
pier, according to the state of the wind and 
tide. We will have deck-chairs, made pos- 
sibly of wicker, and at any rate of wood and 
canvas. I shall sit with my back to the 
engines, watching the gulls flying with white 
wings in our wake. When you throw a bun 
to them they dip their bills in the foam to 
secure it. I have often observed this detail. 



Mr. George Moore 199 

and drawn the attention of careless people to 
it. Life is full of phenomena, all equally 
valuable, from a pimple to a sunset. And you 
will croon a Song of the Secret Pomegran- 
ate, and I will set it to music on the deck. 
Have you noticed how the planks of a ship's 
deck-timber run parallel to one another, like 
the lines of a musical score before you fill 
in the notes? And when we arrive we will 
embrace the Champion of Freedom, and you 
will recite something to him, in ancient Erse 
verse, about me and the Irish revival; and 
the general idea will be as follows: — 

By the lustrous waves of Liff ey, by the ledge of 
Cuddy Reeks, 
By the Lough of White-foot Deirdre, by the 
Blasted Hill of Shee, 
By the Headland of the Daughters of the Snipe 
with Seven Beaks, 
I have carolled in the Gaelic, I have whispered 
Erse to thee, 
O 'Moore, the terror of Saxon Tyrants ! 

Where the levin split asunder Dermott's bog at 
dead of morn, 
Where the ozier-wattled heifer left her tail in 
Eogan's stall, 



200 Borrowed Plumes 

Where O'Brien shed his Breeches, we have met 
and we have sworn 
We would crown the crest of Kruger in the 
old Rotunda hall, 
I and O 'Moore, the terror of Tyrants ! 

Since St. Patrick coursed for vermin on the Dun 
of Druid's Doom, 
When the Sleuth Hound felled the banshee 
in the rift of Bleeding Gorge ; 
Since the High-King up in Tara heard the 
beetle's dying boom, 
There has never, to my knowledge, been a 
genius like George 
O'Moore, the terror of Saxon Tyrants I 



XXI. 

MRS. MEYNELL. 

Detached in his equilibrium, the Young 
Child is instinct with the ichor of Spring. 
He flushes a rhythmic pink, the implicit 
Colour of Life. 

* 5k * Hi 

The vital movement of grass is toward 
reticence rather than greenness. By the 
highways you shall see its embroidery, a 
mute protest to shame the scarlet resonance 
of the pillar-box. That is why the vestries 
will not have it so. 

^ * * * 

To the glazed eye, dull with yearlong 
routine, Yarmouth brings relief with the 
bronze of her kippers. On your seaward 
breakfast-table they lie, a point of diurnal 
pungency ; eloquent, too, of suggestion. Salt, 
that was the breath of their life, is the stuff 

201 



202 Borrowed Plumes 

of their embalming. Not here, in the trite 
phrase, was death the cure of ill, save for a 
brief interspace. Then that which gave its 
savour to existence was itself made the cure 
of death, last ill of all. 

That is why Yarmouth, for all its pier and 
sable minstrelsy, is still the inviolable hermi- 
tage of tired hearts. Its salt is something 
better than Attic. It breathes, as Athens 
never wholly breathed in her prime, the con- 
tinuity of existence. It is vocal with the 
rhythm of death cured and corrected. 

5jC 5jC ^ ^ 

Khaki has the colour of secretiveness ; but 
the robin wears a cuirass that recalls the 
published blood. Yet is there also a privacy 
of the woods, where the bird takes on the 
tone of his environment. The ancients felt 
this when they discovered a note of khaki in 
the flutings of Philomel. 

* * * * 

Seen in perspective there is symmetry even 
in the suburb, futile else. Peckham has this 
dominant note. 



XXII. 
MR. WILLIAM WATSON. 

On New Yearns Day, 

Potential in the marble's maiden womb, 
The living forms of Buonarotti lay ; 

So in the New Year's Alpha dimly loom 
The orb'd infinitudes of Omega ! 

On the Anniversary of the Opening of the British 
Museum. 

Avid of knowledge, you that blindly rage 

After the Undiscoverable Clue, 
Walk up and see yon antic sarcophage ; 

Its rusty mummy was as wise as you I 

On the Modern Woman. 

New Atalantas, straining fast and far. 

How shall the old Milanions hope to beat ? 

On what incalculable motor-car 

Follow the trailing thunders of their feet ? 
203 



204 Borrowed Plumes 

On hearing that the following letter had been ad- 
dressed to the Rev. John Watson ( Ian 
Maclaren) : — " Honoured Sir, me and my 
family wishes to let you kfiow that our souls 
have bee7i wonderful refreshed and elevated 
by your noble p07ne, ' Abdul the D d.^ " 

Great Muse ! and can it be this godless isle 

Breeds any so impervious of pelt 
That they confound my chaste and Greekish 
style 

With kailyard cackle of the so-called Kelt ? 

On a Rooster, shot in mistake for a Cockpheasant. 

Count no man monk because he wears a cowl ! 

Had I but closelier looked thou hadst not 
passed ! 
I took thee for thy better, tumid fowl ! 

And there thou liest, irrevocably grassed 1 



LUCAS* THE OPEN ROAD 

A little book for wayfarers. Compiled by E. V. Lucas. IFz'ik illus" 
trated cover linings. Green and gold flexible covers, zd hnpression. 
i2mo. $1.50. 

Some 125 poems (mostly complete) and 25 prose passages, representing 
over 60 authors, including Fitzgerald, Shelley, Shakespeare, Kenneth 
Grahame, Stevenson, Whitman, Bliss Carman, Brownine;, William Watson, 
Alice Meynel, Keats, Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, William 
Morris, Maurice Hewlett, Isaak Walton, William Barnes, Herrick, Gervase 
Markham, Dobson, Lamb, Milton, Whittier, etc. 

Critic : "The selections tell of farewells to winter and the town, of 
spring and the beauty of the earth, of lovers, of sun and cloud and the windy 
hills, of birds, blossoms, and trees— in fact of everything that makes work 
well-nigh impossible when the world of nature begins to wake from its long 
sleep." 

Dial: "A very charming book from cover to cover. . . . Some things 
are lacking, but all that there is is good." 

Ne7v York Tribune : " It has been made with good taste, and is alto- 
gether a capital publication." 

Lofidon Times : " The only thing a poetry-loving cyclist could allege 
against the book is that its fascinations would make him rest too long." 

LUCAS* A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN 

Over 200 poems, representing some 80 authors. Compiled by Edward 
Verrall Lucas. With title-page and cover- lining pictures in color by 
F. D. Bedford, two other illustrations, and white cloth cover in three 
colors and gilt. Revised edition. lamo. $2.00. 

This book will please older readers, too. Among the poets represented 
are " Anstey," Burns, " Lewis Carroll," Coleridge, Marjorie Fleming, the 
Howitts, Lear, Longfellow, J. W. Riley, Shakespeare, Stevenson, Ann 
and Jane Taylor, Elizabeth Turner, etc. 

Critic : " We know of no other anthology for children so complete 
and well arranged." 

New York Tribune : " The book remains a good one ; it contains 
so much that is charming, so much that is admirably in tune with the 
spirit of childhood. Moreover, the few colored decorations with 
which it is supplied are extremely artistic, and the cover is exception- 
ally attractive." 

Churchman : *' Beautiful in its gay cover, laid paper, and decorated 
title-page. Mr. Edward Verrall Lucas has made the selections with 
nice discrimination and an intimate knowledge of children's needs 
and capacities. Many of the selections are classic, all are refined and 
excellent. The book is valuable as a household treasure." 

Bookman : " A very satisfactory book for its purpose, and has in it 
much that is not only well adapted to please and interest a rational 
child, but that is good, sound literature also." 

Poet Lore : " A child could scarcely get a choicer range of verse to 
roll over in his mind, or be coaxed to it by a prettier volume. ... A 
book to take note of against Christmas and all the birthday gift times 
of the whole year round." 

HENRY HOLT & CO. ^^ %%^lf§^.r^^' 



236 Impression of "one of the most powerful norels of the 

decade . " — Tribune. 



THE GADFLY 

By E. L. VOYNICH 

l2mo. $1.25. 

A Romance of the Italian rising against the Austrians, ear'y in the 
Nineteenth Century. 

New York Tribune: "She shows us the veritable conspirator of 
history, who plotted like a human being and not like an operatic ban- 
dit. . . . It is a thrilling book and absolutely sober. . , . 'The Gadfly' 
is an original and impressive being; ... a story to remember/' 

New York Times : " Paradox worked up with intense dramatic effect 
is the salient feature of ' The Gadfly '; . . . shows a wonderfully strong 
hand, and descriptive powers which are rare; ... a very remarkable 
romance." 

The Dial: "One of the most interesting phases of the history of 
Nineteenth Century Europe. The story of the Italian revolutionary 
movement; ... is full of such incidents as the novelist most desires; 
. . . this novel is one of the strongest of the year, vivid in conception, 
and dramatic in execution, filled with intense human feeling, and 
worked up to a tremendously impressive climax." 

The Critic : " An historical novel permeated with a deep religious 
interest in which from first to last the story is dominant and absorbing. 
, . . ' The Gadfly ' is a figure to live in the imagination." 

The New York Herald : " An exceptionally clever story, eminently 
fresh and original. The author has a capital story to tell, and he tells 
it consummately well. . . . The beaten track has not allured him, and 
the characters to whom he introduces us are not such as we meet in 
every-day novels. This is the crowning merit of this book." 

The Chap Book : " Gives the reading public an opportunity to wel- 
come a new and intense writer; ... a profound psychological study; 
... a powerful climax. Yet, however much the imagination be used, 
the author will be found to rise beyond it; the scene at High Mass on 
the feast of Corpus Christi being one of the most powerful in English 
fiction." 

The Independent: "We have read this peculiar romance with 
breathless interest; ... a romance of revolutionary experiences in 
Italy; lifelike, stirring, picturesque, a story of passion, sacrifice, and 
tragic energy." 

HENRY HOLT & CO. ^S West^23d_^Street 



DOWDEN>S PURITAN AND ANGLICAN 

Studies in Literature. By Edward Dowben. 
341 pp. 8vo. $2.00 net. 

" He has something to say and says it with clearness. 
. . . Notably lucid and instructive. , . . Not without the 
more vivacious quality which comes from a sympathetic 
handling of personal traits." — N. V. Tribune. 

"A notable series of appreciations bound together by a' 
vital unity of subject and interest. . . . The work as a 
whole is as full of ripe judgment as it is of sound learning; 
and it is pervaded withal by a vivid personal enthusiasm 
'vhich makes it delightful reading." — Nation. 

" His new book is important. . . . One may find therein 
the formative influences of early American literature." — 
Times Saturday /Review. 

" The latest volume has all the unity, clearness, and 
sympathy of his former admirable Shakespearian studies. 
. . . As detecting and expounding the deep and vital 
forces at work behind a literature of a given period, as 
pointing out salient points of resemblance as well as of 
difference between these forces, and as giving a moral and 
showing the tendency of the thought of that period, Prof. 
Dowden's forte is in freest play." — N. V. Commercial. 

SELECTIONS FROM DANTE^S DIVINA COM- 
MEDIA 

Chosen, Translated, and Annotated by Richard 
James Cross. The original and translation on oppo- 
site pages. Bound in Florentine style. 225 pp. 
i6mo. I2.00. 
"The work has been executed by both translator and 
publisher with a taste and skill which justify the under- 
taking. The translations are in prose and adhere very 
closely to the original. While discarding all the adorn- 
ments which a metrical version might permit, and depend- 
ing solely upon the interest and import of Dante's thought, 
he has at the same time succeeded in keeping much of the 
spirit of the poem." — Nation. 

"This is a pretty volume to the eye. The translator's 
sympathy with Dante, his elective taste, and his sense of 
rhythm in prose make his studies in the interpretation of 
the great Italian poet interesting and in the main accept- 
able. Mr. Cross's version is smooth, lucid, and luminous." 
— Literary World. 

HENRY HOLT & CO. ^^ ^V^^ltr^^* 



WELLS* HIS 



3d Impression. 

LORDSHIP»S LEOPARD 



^^i 




A Trutlif Bl Narration of Some Impossible Facts. By 

David Dwight Wells. lamo. $1,50. 

A lively English novelist, visiting- Nev*r York, is sus- 
pected of being in league with the Spanish, and escapes 
from the city witti a police wagon and strange com- 
panions, including the '' Leopard." The startling 
adventures that foilow carry them into Canada and 
England, where tlie end is finally reached at " His Lord- 
ship's'" palace. Tn.s s'ory is even more full of comic 
episode than Her Luay^nip^s Elephant. 
Chicago Times-Herald : " There is not a dull page in it." 
N. Y. Herald : "David Dwight Wells is a master of what for 
lack of a better term might be called the ' nonsense novel.' He 
admirably preserves that air of seriousness which emphasizes the 
fun of this carefully planned absurdity, well-nigh as perfect in its 
way as the 'Alice' books— those exquisite masterpieces of topsy- 
turvy art." 

Cleveland Plain Dealer : "Just what might be expected of the 
author of 'Her Ladyship's. Elephant.' , . . Very good fooling." 

Cincinnati Times-Star. : "Any one who enjoys a good laugh 
should read ' His Lordship's Leopard ' by David Dwight Wells. . . . 
Mr. Wells defies criticism, but he need not fear it. Any critic who 
does not enjoy his book is unworthy of the name. ... I most 
assuredly felt sorry when the end was reached, and regret that Mr. 
Wells should have felt that any end was necessary." 

lOth Impression 

WELLS* HER LADYSHIP^S ELEPHANT 

By David Dwight Wklls. lamo. $1.25. 

A very humorous story, dealing with English society, 
growing out of certain experiences of the author while 
a member of our Embassy in London. The elephant's 
experiences, also, are based on facts. 
The Nation: "He is probably funny because he cannot 
help it." 

Neiu York Tribune: "Mr. Wells allows his sense of 

humor to play about the personalities of half a dozen men 

and women whose lives, for a few brief, extraordinary 

days, are inextricably intertwined with the life of the 

aforesaid monarch of the jungle. . . . Smacks of fun which 

can be created by clever actors placed in excruciatingly 

droll situations." 

New York Commercial Advertiser : "A really delicious chain of 

absurdities which are based upon American independence and 

impudence; . . . exceedingly amusing." 

Bu^alo Express : "So amusing is tlie book that the reader is 
aimost too tired to laugh when the elephant puts in his appearance." 
Chicago Tribune: "The courting customs of England and Amer- 
ica are hit off in a most happy vein, with great good humor. . . . 
The author employs his powers of invention with excellent effect." 

HENRY HOLT & CO. ^'^^^^^t.T^^' 

V, 1900 




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